Busy Time (and one more birthday cake)

Whew.  We just finished birthday season, we hosted Thanksgiving, and we just started focusing in on the Christmas stuff.  I'm always amazed with how little room there is in our regular weekly schedule of rehearsals and lessons and appointments that we can cram in any more at this time of year, but somehow we do.  Here's a whirlwind recap mostly for my own record:

My mom, brother Arno, and niece were at our house for Thanksgiving this year.  The next day my brother Barrett joined us while his wife and baby continued their visit down in Illinois with her family.  It was a great Thanksgiving, despite it being the first one without my dad.  Thanksgiving is also my parents' wedding anniversary, so a certain amount of sadness was unavoidable, but overall we mostly had fun.  My mom did most of the cooking and everything was delicious, we played telephone-pictionary which is always hilarious, and we mostly just enjoyed being together.  I love having everyone in my house.

Mona made beautiful turkeys out of duct tape and paper for every person at the table.  Each one was different and I loved them all.

Odds, Ends, and a Hopeless Challenge (Babble)

Did you have a good Thanksgiving?  I hope so.  We had a lovely time here with friends over and lots of food and it was great.

But first thing the next morning I drove to Detroit to visit my parents.  My dad has been back in the hospital, and it was hard to decide what to do.  I felt I should go out there but didn’t know if bringing the kids would be too much, and I didn’t want to be apart from them during Thanksgiving (or a birthday).  I finally decided it made more sense to go alone right after turkey day.

I always try to take a picture of my kids right before I leave for a trip by myself, and this was Friday’s:

They are all in the glow of the computer because Mona didn’t want to stop the game she was in the middle of, so rather than have her quit I had Quinn and Aden pose on either side and told Mona she had to look at me when I counted to three.


Anyway, my dad’s health problems are posing all kinds of difficulties for my parents at the moment, mostly because his mobility is limited.  But we played Scrabble and I read to him a little, showed him photos of the kids and pictures of our new porch, and talked about our new dog.  It was a nice visit.

However, I’m still feeling out of sorts after the long drive there and back and frazzled about Mona’s upcoming party and a concert I have to play this week and about a million other things that are making it hard to focus on one coherent blog post, so here is a hodgepodge of things for your consideration.

Let’s start with a couple of Mona Creations.  The first is a Firebird that I actually convinced her to let me keep so it doesn’t get destroyed.  She offered me shared custody for about a week, but then recently told me I could just have it.

Then there is this Squid, which is just cool.  My kid can make a squid.  I am beyond proud.

Next, the dog went to the groomer and came back looking like a different (if equally cute) dog.  It’s hard to get a good picture of the dog because he just comes out a black blur most of the time.  I got the most satisfying crazy happy greeting from the dog when I returned from Detroit.  It’s ridiculous how much I love this dog after only two weeks.

And now a challenge!  My dad asked me when I was visiting if I would please go out into the library and get his Escher book.  It was in the shelves on the wall on the right side of the room.  Which looks like this:

Yeah.

My dad said it wouldn’t be hard because it was all in alphabetical order.  I don’t know what alphabet he’s using but it’s not one with which I’m familiar.  So the book on Escher is supposedly in this section, so if you spot it let me know:

And that’s about all I have time for because I am already late for a rehearsal.  Take care and enjoy your leftovers!

Rock On, Lobster (Babble)

I could probably just write a whole blog devoted to Mona’s paper creations.  There are too many to show on any given day to have room to write about anything else, but I need to share this lobster.

Yes, I’m an overly proud mom seeing what her kids do through some kind of mom-goggles, but is that not seriously a cool lobster?  That’s darned good for a seven year old.  I’m impressed she can construct a lobster on a whim with no help from anyone.  It’s made entirely out of red duct tape because she wanted it to be waterproof.  Plus she writes on it with regular markers which she can wipe off if she wants to later.

Of all three of my kids, Mona is the only one who I don’t think tests accurately.  Aden scores about where I would expect her to score on things like the ‘MAP’ and other standardized tests the school has the kids do.  She shows signs of being like I was in school, where tests reveal potential in all areas that doesn’t always get realized along the channels teachers are hoping for.  She’s smart, but only interested in doing what she wants to do.  Quinn is already reading and adding numbers in columns and he’s not even going to be in full day kindergarten until fall of 2012, so he will test fine when he gets there.  He’s smart in a way that will be easy for a test to measure because he has an excellent memory and an orderly mind.

Mona is brilliant in unconventional ways.  If there were a standardized test that asked children to build an entire zoo out of scraps of paper and some chewing gum she would leave her classmates and most of the school district in the dust.  On normal tests she scores very middle of the pack, even though hers are the kinds of skills that got the Apollo 13 astronauts home alive.  But schools don’t administer MacGyver exams.

I’m not worried about Mona, because I know whatever she chooses to tackle she will do well.  I wonder more about what kind of institutions and educational or work environments might miss out on seeing what she has to offer because the tools used to measure her abilities may not capture what she knows.  She is creative and funny and makes awesome pancakes.

How Have You Lived Without Crayon Pockets? (Babble)

My kids are always doing projects.  It’s in their genes.  Ask me how many different things I’m working on at any given time and the list includes any number of writing projects, a violin I’m (supposed to be) building, a coat rack that will be really cool someday, and dozens of crafty ideas just waiting for their turn.  Ian has been consolidating our online computer equipment in ways that are way over my head, but he’s always got some project going on too.  The kids are no different.

Most of Mona’s projects involve what she refers to as her “paper creations.”  These are some really out of date examples from back when she was six of the kinds of things she makes, a couple of which I rescued from the trash because I love them even when Mona thinks they are not good enough:

She’s not content with things being flat, so she always makes folds to pop things up a bit, and often wraps tape around wads of paper or tissue to make them three dimensional.  (I love the beak on that bird!)  Back in the Fall she wished she had a toy kangaroo, so she used scraps of Halloween costume material and masking tape and whipped one up in about an hour.

Luckily Montessori school caters to kids’ interests, so Mona has managed to tailor most of her lessons around her paper creations.  She makes models of particular animals and then writes a report and builds a display and gets to do presentations for her class.  To date she’s done presentations about blue jays, lemurs, flashlight fish, and the current one is about water walking lizards.  Anyway, Mona always has a project or two or ten going.

Quinn, by comparison, is more into writing.  He spends long stretches at a white board we have propped up in front of the fireplace working on his cursive.  He also likes to cut out pieces of paper to color, either making valentines or money or rainbows or small invitations.  I once printed him out a bunch of cursive practice pages I found online and it kept him absorbed at the violin store for a whole afternoon.

He’s also still actively lining things up in rows and putting things in things.  So Quinn is always busy.

Aden’s projects tend to be more tied to some kind of display or performance.  When she was about five she once made a whole natural history museum in the living room with legos.  Last summer she enlisted a friend to help her make the family room into a zoo, complete with maps and tickets.  She likes to put on plays and magic shows–anything that requires rehearsals and costumes and props makes her happy, especially if she is in charge.  I’m constantly coming across odd scenes like this:

I think it was a restaurant game of some sort, and the bicycle basket is a cornucopia, and the flowers are a nice touch, but I don’t know why Quinn is in his kangaroo costume or why Mona is peeking out in a unicorn suit.  The table cloth?  That’s the sheet off Aden’s bed.  We have many discussions about not using non-toys in games, but it never registers.

The latest big Aden production was back in Michigan when we all visited for the gallery closing party.  She invented the “Pipe Band Girls” and kept her sister and cousin in the basement for hours of rehearsal and ticket making.  The show was actually really good, despite the fact that both Mona and Ellora suffered stage fright and wouldn’t do their solos, but Aden soldiered on and reveled in the applause at the end.  Here’s Quinn being enlisted as the ticket taker (tickets were a penny apiece), and Ellora, Mona and Aden playing an assortment of bottles tuned with different amounts of water and other objects found in my parents’ basement that sounded good when you hit them with sticks:

So have you been sufficiently distracted by this tangent or are you still wondering what crayon pockets are?  Well, I’m almost there, I promise.

Recently Quinn went on a drawing binge that included “hanging things up.”  The dining room is getting filled with Quinn art, which mostly consists of rainbows and the alphabet in lower case cursive over and over.

Mona was also busy cranking out drawings the same day that Quinn was “hanging things up” and decided that a giant tub of crayons was not convenient enough.  Why have your creativity delayed by walking to the craft shelf to get the crayons?  It was pure hell, apparently, because Mona began installing “crayon pockets” in every room.

See?  There are now crayons in the kitchen (which is a few steps from the craft supply area where we keep the tub of crayons), crayons in the dining room (about four steps from the kitchen) and–inexplicably–in the craft supply area right next to the tub of crayons.

But what do I know?  Apparently not much about the necessity of crayons at your fingertips at any given moment.  Of course, they have neglected to keep the crayon pockets stocked with crayons, and now they are just sad looking little paper cocoons taped to my walls.  Which I’m hoping by the time you read this I will have managed to take down and clean up in order to make way for the next important project.  (Please let it not involve glitter….)

The short, dramatic tale of Mona's paper chameleon (Babble)

Mona often makes what she refers to as her ‘paper creations.’  She draws, colors, and cuts out animals from paper and bends and tapes them into little three dimensional playthings.  They’re quite wonderful, but easily lost or damaged, so occasionally I swipe some of my favorites while she’s not looking and hide them in a bowl in the living room in the hopes of preserving a few.  I think it’s interesting that she’s found a way to be artistic that is distinctly different from what her sister does.  Aden is often praised for her artistic abilities, so Mona’s developed a style that is not in direct competition with the kinds of things her sister likes to make.

At school, between assignments, Mona has been working on a paper creation out of recycled materials from a scrap box.  When she needs time to herself after a group activity, she likes to retreat into her own private projects, and this week she made a chameleon.  It was a pretty impressive little piece of work (said the proud mom who may be overstating things but is not apologizing for it).  The chameleon had thickness in the body composed of tape wrapped in bundles, and the tail was coiled paper that could actually hold onto a pencil and allow the paper lizard to dangle.  It came with a green leaf to stand on, and a matching cover to place over the chameleon so it would look like it had changed color to blend in with the leaf.  It was clever and fun, and unfortunately it attracted the attention of some of the other children.

Mona, even though she has moments when she enjoys the spotlight, does not as a rule like being the center of attention.  She gets flustered and shy among too many people.  She also doesn’t like to disappoint other children.  So when a couple of the kids in her class asked to have Mona’s chameleon she wasn’t sure how to say no.  Apparently she did give it to one girl for awhile who told Mona a sad story about her grandfather not feeling well and how much he would like to see such a lovely chameleon, but Mona managed to get it back later. 

When I picked her up after school she was crying because she was feeling pressure to make chameleons for everyone and she didn’t feel up to it.  I tracked down her teacher to try and get the full story (because Mona is cute but doesn’t always lay out a clear narrative that I can trust to be accurate), and then we both told Mona that she doesn’t have to give away the things she makes if she doesn’t want to, and she certainly doesn’t have to make everyone a chameleon who asks.  The teacher suggested she point the other children toward the materials she used and tell them to make chameleons for themselves.

In any case, I was hoping that would be the end of the drama about ‘Lizzy’ the paper chameleon, but the excitement continued today when Mona was trying to smuggle the thing back into the school (I don’t understand how her mind works that she even felt that was necessary, but okay), and she somehow lost it between the car and the classroom.  From the way my husband relayed it to me, she had the chameleon under her shirt when she got out of the car in the morning, and by the time she got to her room it was gone.  They went back to the school after swimming lessons and searched for it on the playground, but to no avail.  (I asked her why she had it under her shirt in the first place, and she said she wanted to put it in her backpack but there was no time.  That’s very Mona.)

Then tonight after everyone was supposed to be tucked in, Mona climbed onto my bed, snuggled up, and declared she didn’t think she could sleep because she kept thinking about Lizzy.  I opened my laptop and said I would tell her chameleon’s story on my blog.  I told her I couldn’t promise anything, but I was sure if someone found it on the playground and then read this, they would realize it was hers and get it back to us.  She looked pleased, and then asked, “But what if no one reads it?”  I told her it was a long shot, but we never know until we try.

So I don’t know if this post was entertaining to anyone out there, but it got my daughter back into bed with a smile on her face, and in my book that’s some fine writing.  (I wonder what next week’s chapter in paper creation theater will bring.)