limerick – Page 6 – little thoughts

an oasis in the desert

Posted on 2018-07-022018-07-02 by kristinabean

I took my children to the lake last Thursday.

Yes, even here in the desert we have lakes! They are mostly manmade and act as water reservoirs… but they also serve as beautiful oases, especially when temperatures start rising.

My sister-in-law joined us for a couple hours with her four kids, which was especially good when Limerick got in too deep and started panicking and needed me – that extra pair of adult eyes and hands makes a big difference sometimes. It was also fun for us just to spend time with them! But we stayed after they needed to leave and it was equally wonderful in different ways.

I mentioned our day trip to someone and they instantly reacted with the words, “what a chore!”

I still haven’t been able to figure it out.

It isn’t a chore to spend time outside, in the natural unbuilt environment, enjoying the beauty of creation. In fact, it’s something I’m constantly striving to do more often! I want my children to love and respect the natural world, to feel connected to it and desire to protect and preserve it; they won’t if they are never exposed to it. And we were so lucky on this particular day to be visited by a herd of wild horses. I mean, how often do you get to see large wild animals like that? We were all in awe – even Aubade kept pointing and exclaiming in wonder as they moved through the water.

It isn’t a chore to take my children out on an excursion – at least not this type of outing. Rondel and I both struggle in crowded indoor environments, or in highly structured populated activities, because of the constant sensory bombardment and social expectations. Limerick and Aubade are both still noisy constantly-moving little people (as they should be!). So when we’re outside, away from the artificial stimuli and the obscure social norms of the city, free to make the sounds we want to make and move our bodies in comfortable ways without bothering anyone, it is incredibly relaxing and refreshing.

It isn’t a chore to be with my children, to let go of my own pursuits and just focus on them for an afternoon, enjoying the small details of life with them. They remind me how exciting a lake bed scattered with shells can be; they delight my heart with their surprised laughter at things that are now old and familiar to me. After you’ve been to the beach a few times, you anticipate the way the waves knock into you; when you’re only 1 or 3 or 4, each new wave comes as a surprise and a gift.

And it certainly wasn’t a chore to watch Rondel and Limerick playing together for hours, intent on their exploration of this new world, sharing it with each other as best friends do. On the contrary, it was a gift for me as a parent to see my children growing and deepening in their relationship with each other in such a natural and unforced way.

I know these days are fleeting. For only these few years will I have such a strong influence on their lives, and such a deep connection; I don’t want them to stay little forever, but I do want to live these years with intentionality. Of course it takes a bit of planning and organization to take three small children to the lake for the afternoon. But the riches all of us reap as a result far more than outweigh that work of preparation. For us, places like this are more than just real and physical oases in the desert: they are also oases of renewal for our souls.

literary explorations – traveling the world with picture books!

Posted on 2018-06-272018-06-27 by kristinabean

Inspired by the great resource Give Your Child The World, a globally-inspired picture book anthology by Jamie C. Martin, as well as by Rondel’s fascination with animals from around the world, we had a sort of Africa focus in our home a couple weeks ago. Martin is actually hosting a virtual book club spending one week on each world region over the summer, which I’m attempting to keep up with, but I’m woefully unprepared for Asia this week…

Anyway, Africa was a great place to start since most of Rondel’s favorite animals live there, and it was a natural connection to then begin reading stories involving those animals and the people who live near them. We also experimented with some African recipes (there is a huge variety of cuisines across the continent, so we were barely able to explore any of it and it still felt like a lot!) and crafts (but my kids don’t do so well with directed crafts). Of the books we could find from Martin’s recommendations at our library, two really stood out as our favorites: Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, a Nandi folktale retold by Verna Aardema; and Wangari’s Trees of Peace, a brief pictorial biography of Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize laureate who helped restore land degraded by irresponsible logging (and in the process helped maintain peace and prevent poverty in her home country), by Jeanette Winter.

The biography of Wangari is written at a level that even Limerick, at 3.5, can understand and follow along with, so many of the details of her life have obviously been omitted – this is just the general arc of her story. But those spare elements have been woven together, with the help of beautiful images, to create a compelling narrative. Every time we read it (which was often, since Limerick kept requesting it), Rondel would be devastated when Wangari returns to Kenya after studying abroad to find the forests cut down, the village women walking miles for firewood and food, and desert encroaching upon the arable land. The boys’ eyes would widen, riveted on the book, when Wangari stands “tall as an oak” to protect the remaining forests, when the government officials beat her and jail her for protesting their course of action. And at the end, when millions of trees spread across Kenya again, the boys would be all smiles and laughter, imagining the birdsong in the forest. So I would highly recommend it as a brief introduction to Wangari and modern Africa for young children.

In addition, it has given me a point of comparison when talking with the boys about current events in our own country. When Wangari is jailed, the book tells us that “Right is right, even if you’re alone,” and the whole story demonstrates how the right thing to do can sometimes be the opposite of what the government or people in authority want to do. So when the boys heard our president talking for a few minutes before I changed the radio station (I usually only listen to talk radio when I’m alone in the car), and asked questions about what he was saying, I could explain his position and then also explain how I thought it was wrong, morally wrong if not legally wrong, and how his power and authority didn’t make all of his beliefs or actions morally right and good. And I was able to tell them that unlike Wangari, people like us would be able to peacefully protest those wrong things without fear of imprisonment, because our nation makes space for differing opinions and protests (ideally, of course, but since they’re 3 and 4 they get the idealized version on some things still).

Wangari cared deeply about her country – she loved it – and that’s why she was able to work for its improvement with such persistence, devotion, and passion. She started with small things she knew she could do (like physically planting new trees to replace the harvested ones), and let her love guide her into bigger and bigger forms of activism. And when I look around me and see people cynically apathetic about this country, it makes me want to instill in my children a love for their country and a passion to make it better, in small personal ways and perhaps even in big political ways. It is only with the love and dedication of people like Wangari that we can heal our culture, our environment, and our world; I’d much rather my children be like her than like the enforcers of government authority who beat and imprisoned her.

At this point I’m doubtful that any other picture book we find for this book club will influence our family quite as much as this one has! But every one we’ve managed to find so far from Martin’s anthology has been worth a second read at least; we’ve learned a lot, and we’ve laughed a lot, and we’ve filled our home with beautiful pictures and stories, and there isn’t much more to ask for from a picture book 🙂

At the time of posting, Amazon has Give Your Child the World available on Kindle for only $0.99! It is a resource worth far more than that.

family life, sqt

starting our summer strong

Posted on 2018-06-082018-06-08 by kristinabean

Because Rondel was in zoo camp every morning this week (which, by the way, was a major success – he absolutely loved it), I got to spend some more focused time with Limerick and Aubade, and they got to spend more time playing together. Normally, Rondel does most of the talking and directing when the kids are playing, so I was curious what would happen in his absence; what happened was that Limerick filled in the gaps quite easily and just about talked non-stop, especially towards the beginning of the week. And it was nice to have the chance to listen to him without having to simultaneously try to listen to Rondel… it can be a bit much when they are both talking to me (and demanding a response!) at the same time.

On the first day, we stayed at the zoo and watched the Andean bears for a long time. Limerick decided he would be an imaginary creature called a buck bear, and spent at least thirty minutes describing this animal and its habitat to me while Aubade slept. (It is very much an atypical bear, as it has sticky feet like geckos and gills like a fish! Rondel never lets him get away with such aberrations from reality 😛 ). He also was brave enough to sit right against the glass next to the baboon! He’d been watching Aubade interact with her for a while, and had clearly wanted to see the baboon up close himself, but had been too scared to do so. I was proud of him for getting closer even though he was nervous.
On the second day, we came home and just hung out together. We cleaned, we read books, we played with stuffed animals – it was relaxed and fun. (Also, that night we received Rondel’s official diagnosis of autism, after several weeks of waiting.)
On the third day we did more of the same, but stopped in Downtown Mesa on the way home to explore the musical instruments in front of the IDEA Museum. We used to visit there all the time when we lived within walking distance, when Rondel and Limerick were Aubade’s age, but she hasn’t gotten to experience it very much, and judging from her reactions she was very glad we went!

Yes, I let her choose her own clothes and accessories… apparently oversized T-shirts pilfered from her brothers and metal chain VeggieTales necklaces are in fashion in the 18 month old set these day 🙂 She is so opinionated about what she wears – and always ridiculously cute in it, no matter how off-the-wall it may seem at first.
On the fourth day of camp we rested in the morning but took Rondel with us down to IKEA in the afternoon! IKEA may be a store, but my children seem to think it is a giant playground. Every couch needs to be sat upon, every pillow smushed, every stuffed animal hugged, and every bed snuggled in. We were just there for some curtains, but we lingered everywhere (and let Aubade take a nice long nap in her carseat in the shopping cart en route!). Then I kept my momentum going long enough to hang and hem the curtains, and make a curtain and valance for the kitchen sink window with some fabric I found in my stash.Here they are all pulled back! Those are south-facing windows… and it’s summer in Arizona… so the curtains haven’t been spending too much time open like this. Even just the white fabric over the sink made a noticeable difference when I first hung it up. And I impressed myself (and probably my husband too) by managing to actually complete a project!
The last day of zoo camp I missed out on drop off, pick up, and sweet time with the littles because it was my husband’s day off and my day to go in and work. Not quite as fun, or not fun in the same way, but I did get to consult with a colleague from a different core facility and develop a project and sample tracker for their instruments and workflows, which was both interesting and satisfying. Since I’ve started working such limited hours, and partly from home, my position has shifted a bit away from the biology lab work to the information systems behind the lab work, and I’m finding it really engaging.
It feels like we began the summer at a sprint, and I think it is just going to keep on this way as we have swim lessons and a visit from my sister in June, and my parents are funding a second session of zoo camp for Rondel as a birthday present in July. But honestly the heat is so intense that having planned activities helps prevent me from doing nothing but lounging around the house eating ice cream! Not that ice cream is a bad thing, necessarily… I finally jumped on the nice cream train this summer, one night when Rondel was emotionally collapsing over the absence of ice cream in our house and I knew there were tons of frozen bananas just calling to me. The plain vanilla flavor isn’t my favorite, but the chocolate peanut butter version tastes like decadent chocolate ice cream, with the added bonus of being healthy enough that I can serve it to the kids for lunch and become the coolest mom ever. I don’t really have a recipe, but in essence I just blend up frozen banana chunks in the food processor, with a bit of milk if necessary, and then add in a huge scoop of peanut butter and a couple tablespoons of cocoa powder. We’ve made at least three batches in the past two weeks, and would have made more if we hadn’t run out of bananas and had to buy more, wait for them to get nice and overripe, and then wait for them to freeze! My skepticism regarding this whole concept has been removed by the goodness of nice cream.
And zoo camp itself? Well, every morning Rondel cooperated with me to get dressed and eat his food, he ran ahead into the group to participate, and he greeted me back at the end with endless excitement, ready to tell me about everything he did. He got to pet, hold, and feed a huge variety of animals (from bunnies and boa constrictors to sting rays and giraffes); he drew pictures; he played games with other kids; he got to bring home a sting ray tooth that he sifted out of the sand in a pool; and he got to see so many animals that he loves. In short, he got to practice social skills and adaptability while also being in one of his favorite places in the world, getting to spend time focused on animals without any distractions. I just wish I had pictures!

What are your favorite ways to deal with the heat, especially with little kids? They don’t approve of me just lying in the sun soaking it up, but running around when it’s 100 degrees outside gets tiring fast! And do you have any awesome plans for the summer?

Linking up with Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum today!

family life, sqt

{sqt} – our random happenings

Posted on 2018-06-01 by kristinabean

For the quick takes link up this week, some moments and thoughts that were really too small to make up a whole post on their own 🙂

As Aubade grows older, her relationship with Limerick is really beginning to flourish and deepen. He took a while to adjust to having a younger sibling around, but recently he has taken on the older brother role more consciously. If he sees her lying down he will lie down next to her and snuggle; if she is playing with something he will join her; if she is struggling with something he will try to teach her or help her. He will also tell me how cute she is and how much he loves her, and will describe to me all the things she does that make him laugh. She in turn follows him around, wrestles and dances with him, randomly comes up and hugs him, and wants to play with everything he is playing with.
Aubade and Limerick using an automatic sink, backs to the camera, faces reflected out-of-focus in a mirror behind the sink
Non-toy items are apparently the best things to play with these days. Currently, all the forks are spread out on the kitchen table as a herd of fork monsters. They use their long sharp teeth to fight each other to establish dominance, I’ve heard.
Limerick has a significant dislike for shoes, which is somewhat inconvenient now that the pavement is too hot to touch every afternoon. He has one pair he will tolerate when necessary but he takes them off every chance he can find (such as at the zoo, until a zoo volunteer told us it was against zoo rules).
Aubade is leaning into a large stone water fountain; Limerick, next to her, is looking at the camera while taking a bite out of a cucumber.

Also, he likes to eat cucumbers like most people eat apples. I’m not going to try to persuade him otherwise!
Rondel’s hair is so long. As in, almost shoulder length! I’m going to be sad when he finally asks to have it cut, I think.
Our anniversary was this weekend! Seven years so far, with four homes, three kids, two jobs, and one degree along the way. We celebrated by having dinner as a family and spending most of it apart with one of us handling a meltdown and the other feeding the two remaining kids. How is that for real life? We are planning on doing something together when my parents are available to babysit, however 🙂
I should not be allowed to go shopping on my own with the kids: I can’t resist when they ask for certain things. In other news, we now have a child-sized floating stuffed turtle that can double as a pool raft that will be living (and swimming) at Grandma’s house…
A couple nights ago I was putting the boys to bed and they both plastered themselves up next to me, to the point where I started to feel panicky. Little kids have high physical touch requirements, and that can definitely be hard for me sometimes. But at other times I think to myself, when will I ever again have the opportunity to give and receive so many hugs and kisses and snuggles every day? And the spontaneous exuberant hug of a toddler is hard to match.

Head on over to This Ain’t The Lyceum for the rest of the {sqt} link-up today!

family life, musings

love

Posted on 2018-05-242018-05-23 by kristinabean

Love is such a difficult thing to describe; it is impossible to quantify. Rondel and Limerick have been attempting to articulate how much they appreciate or enjoy something by telling me they love it “even more” than they love something very special to them, including people (so one would say he loved Grandma more than Mommy, and the other one would state the opposite, or they would say they loved a new type of popsicle even more than swimming). They have also asked me a few times who I loved the most – talk about a question with no right answer!

What I’ve been explaining to them, and how I answered their question, was that I love all of them in different ways, because they are different people and our relationships are likewise different. I love them all just the same amount, but it looks different; in a sense, my love for each of them is a different color, but each color blazes with the same intensity, beauty, and brightness.

If they asked me which color represented my love for each of them, this is how I would respond…

Continue reading “love” →

family life, musings, quotes

wonder

Posted on 2018-05-162018-05-16 by kristinabean

Watching my children play, I am reminded of the wonder and beauty of small and simple things. There is enough joy in a glass of milk to send a three year old dancing around the kitchen; there is enough beauty in a well-done coloring page to keep a distractible, active four year old still and entranced watching it happen; there is enough passion in a stuffed animal to occupy the full attention and imagination of the one year old who walk around snuggling and protecting it. Continue reading “wonder” →

family life

pea gravel!

Posted on 2018-05-042018-05-07 by kristinabean

When we moved into our new house last summer, the home had been mostly fixed up (aside from a few plumbing issues that surfaced in our first month living here… old pipes) but the yards were completely flat dirt. Horrible dusty barren dirt, too, filled with trash; even the Bermuda grass could only survive in a few patches.

We’ve been slowly trying to make the space both aesthetically pleasing and functional, so towards that end we got twenty tons of pea gravel delivered one weekend, to fill in a play area in the back yard.

Continue reading “pea gravel!” →

musings

shelter from the shoulds

Posted on 2018-04-192018-04-16 by kristinabean

Sometimes it seems like there is a lot of pressure to do things for rather external and arbitrary reasons. Preparation for adulthood is a big one, for example – learn these math facts now so that you’ll be educated and prepared for your job as an adult; exercise and eat healthy now so that you’ll have better health when you’re older; practice a musical instrument as a child because you’ll regret not having done so when you’re older; and so on. Of course, if you attempted to prepare for adulthood in every possible way (even limiting yourself to a single culture), you would lose your childhood and probably wouldn’t be able to cover everything anyway…

Happiness is another oft-cited reason, and an even more arbitrary one, as the things which lead to a fulfilled and happy life for one individual can be radically different than the elements that are necessary for another. There might be pressure to get married and start a family when a person honestly does not want children or is not ready for the commitment of marriage. There might be a push to get off social media as a sort of “spiritual refreshment” when a person struggles to connect with their friends and communities through other means, so that the lack of social media pushes them into isolation.

And worst of all are the cultural “shoulds” – the things that people thing you ought to do, just because they are considered normal, or aspirational, or “good.” You “should” read these books, or listen to that music, or study American history in junior high, or clean your house with only vinegar and baking soda, or live in the city to fight suburban sprawl, or live in the country and try to be self-sustaining, or ride your bike as much as possible, or eat only these types of food, or dress in these types of clothes – just because that is what everyone else, in a large amorphous and vague blob, things you should do.

I’m trying to keep my kids sheltered from these “shoulds” for as long as I can.

I want them to be free from that pressure long enough to gain confidence in who they are and in how they process the world.

I want them to have the time and space to form their own goals, to explore their own interests, to decide what path makes the most sense for themselves, and to develop their own motivation.

I don’t want them to be so exhausted from trying to live up to everyone else’s expectations that they have no margin left to imagine a future of their own choosing.

I don’t want them to feel self-conscious about the judgment of others when they take a step backwards, or make a mistake, or pause to observe and analyze their course – the “shoulds” of perfection and speed are powerful and deadly.

And whatever their goal might be – if it is finding a perch to sit on to study the world in its beauty and complexity, or taking a flying leap for the rush and satisfaction of a challenge overcome, or some path that never even occurred to me before they charted their course – I hope that they continue to live free and wild and bold and uniquely themselves, whether they accomplish that goal or not.

(Images are of Limerick playing on a spiderweb-type piece of playground equipment. In each image he is a bit more confident in his body language. In the second-to-last image he sits on the corner looking away from the camera, choosing his next step; in the last image he is leaping from one step to the next, completely airborne.)

family life

little problems, big feelings

Posted on 2018-04-03 by kristinabean

We had some frustrations, today, as we went about our normal adventures.

Someone was upset to the point of tears because the cars in the lane next to us were moving and we weren’t and this child didn’t understand why (they had a left turn arrow…).

Someone broke down because their brother finished the bag of goldfish, even though they’d been able to eat an equal amount.

Someone sobbed and wailed in the grocery store because they were thirsty but didn’t want to drink from the water fountain.

Someone screamed and threatened because their brother put in the puzzle piece they wanted to do (make that two someones…)

Someone ran across the playground hiding their face in their hands because I wouldn’t let them push another kid off of the equipment they wanted to use.

Honestly, most of these moments involved fairly trivial triggers, at least from my perspective. It’s been a long time since forgetting a cup for my water and having to use a fountain instead brought me to tears… But for my children, these “little” things have a big impact. Something in their world isn’t functioning the way they expect or want it to, and it throws everything off kilter emotionally.

And when it does, I have the incredible privilege of being able to support and comfort them without being pulled underwater by my own equally strong emotions, since the things that bother them no longer affect me in that way. I can be the pillar of strength and the promise of unconditional love in those moments when they are falling apart, using those struggles as an opportunity to connect with them and deepen our relationship, instead of mocking or shaming them for “overreacting” to something so small. All I have to do is remember how vastly different their perspective is from mine, how much less experience they have to understand the world around them, and how little control and independence they have in their lives, and respond to them accordingly.

family life

going to the zoo!

Posted on 2018-03-132018-03-14 by kristinabean

The boys – especially Rondel – have been deeply interested in dinosaurs for quite a long time now, and are beginning to branch out into animals of all types. It really began with the Planet Earth documentaries that I would put on for them during Aubade’s nap times, and has continued with a short series called Africa’s Deadliest that is just as overly dramatic as the name suggests but which contains some great footage of wild animals as well as a lot of scientific facts. When we found and caught a lizard (well, rescued it from a bowl it had fallen into, to be more accurate) not too long ago, he was entranced: he understood intuitively how to hold it gently and carefully, and let it climb all over him with no fear, and ended up playing with it for 45 minutes before releasing it so it could return to its natural habitat.

So I was not surprised when he asked to go to the zoo this week, nor when he actually showed in interest in seeing the animals instead of just the dinosaur exhibit and the splash pad! And it was a good day to go!

We did of course have to visit the dinosaurs:

Obviously we couldn’t observe any live, wild, natural animal life here – but we had some discussions about the different types of nests made by different dinosaurs (we compared the twig nest of the Citipati – a feathered broody dinosaur – to that of the Diabloceratops, which was too large to brood its eggs and most likely made a mud nest like a crocodile), as well as about how the different types of dinosaurs might react if they saw us!

From the dinosaur trail the bighorn sheep exhibit is also visible, and Aubade got very excited when I pointed them out and told the kids what they were. She leaned forward in the stroller as far as she could, waving and yelling, “Hi!” – and then she turned to me, smiled, and matter-of-factly said, “Baa!” It was neat seeing her make the connection between the distant animal on the mountainside and the fuzzy white blob in her Moo, Baa, La La La board book by Sandra Boynton.

When we left the dinosaur trail, it seemed like a lot of the animals were active and awake – we got to see baboon, mandrills, oryx, cheetah (unfortunately they were difficult to see, but we did manage to spot them), otters, flamingos, zebras, and more! The flamingos were standing right by the fence, so we stood on one leg like they did, and noticed how they could turn their heads all the way around backwards to use their back like a pillow, and wondered why their large beaks only ever opened a very small amount.

Per Rondel’s request, after a cool-down break at the splash pad we visited the Tropical Birds trail, which includes a small aviary. Apparently, it is mating season at the zoo – so all the birds were awake and showing off their finery! The male peacock had his full tail fan extended, and kept shaking it at the peahen, making a surprisingly loud rattling noise when he did so. In the aviary, the male argus pheasant was strutting around on the path, making a call that the zoo keeper told us he only made during this season, instead of hiding in the back corners as he tends to do the rest of the year.

Rondel was absolutely captivated. He approached the bird slowly and quietly, and held his hands tightly back so he wouldn’t accidentally touch it (he would jump out of the way if the bird turned around so that he wouldn’t end up touching his long tail feather!), and just squatted down gazing at him for a long time, as other groups of people came and went.

Limerick was a little less certain, but he eventually went over as well. I was super proud of both of them – they are often very impulsive and active kids, and they had no trouble at all adjusting their behavior to what was needed by the animals. We talked a bit here about how a lot of viruses can jump between birds and people, so if we touched the birds we could get them sick or they could get us sick… my molecular biology background always ends up showing itself somehow 🙂

We finished up with the tiger and the Komodo dragon. I had never actually seen the Komodo dragon exhibit at our zoo, but Rondel instantly remembered them from the new Planet Earth series and was incredibly excited about them. They weren’t moving much – just soaking in the sun – but they are impressive creatures. We noticed how it was basking in the sun to soak up the energy it needs as a cold-blooded animal, and counted its claws (five on each foot, just like us, in case you wondered).

And of course we played on the Komodo dragon statue for a while!

This is what I get when I tell the kids to smile at me… I guess Rondel is somewhat close?

Playing together – I think they are subduing the Komodo dragon so it can’t fight them.

The most wonderful thing about homeschooling is the ability we have to follow our interests – obviously in going to the zoo for a whole morning instead of adhering to a lesson plan or a class schedule, but also in deciding when to linger at an exhibit and when to move on, when to talk about the details of how an animal lives and when to stick to the basic overview, when to focus on the live animal exhibits and when to simply just have fun. The experience we had today was so real and so rich that I wouldn’t trade it for any classroom I’ve ever known.