Music

I often hear other moms talking about their kids listening to the Beatles or other "classic" music and wonder if I've gone about this music thing all wrong. When the kids were smaller, we only listened to "kids" music that they liked – Disney soundtracks and other music designed for kids. When we got the minivan, then we listened to the Kids Place Live channel on XM and that was pretty much the extent of their music exposure. I wanted them to hear music that was meant for them, music that would "speak" to them - and it did! But I now realize that they missed out on learning about other kind of music in their "formative years" and I hope they'll be able to recover! (only partly kidding)

When I was a kid, of course all we had to listen to in Mom's car was the radio. (Dad was fancy...he had an 8-track player for at least some of the time!) And she picked what we listened to – seems to me it was mainly oldies - 50s and 60s. Old country, too. When it was just the three of us, she also played music at night (loud!) after we went to bed, and it was a wide variety of stuff - the Eagles, Al Green, Emmylou Harris, Jimmy Buffett, the Commodores, the Beach Boys - it was all over the map. And that made an impression on me – I still love (most of) that stuff!

Their musical tastes are becoming more varied now, but it's mostly pop music. Which is fine, but it'd be awesome if they liked the stuff that I like! *Sigh* Maybe one day. Amy's on a big "Hamilton" kick and Reed surprised me by saying he like an album the Red Hot Chili Peppers put out last year. I know they'll eventually find their way to "their" true musical love one day.

I just hope they'll one day be able to sing along to Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke"...

Music is a world within itself
With a language we all understand
With an equal opportunity
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands
But just because a record has a groove
Don't make it in the groove
But you can tell right away at letter A
When the people start to move
They can feel it all over
They can feel it all over people

And maybe a George Jones song or two.

(And I really feel like I've written about this before, but I can't find it if I did!)

Amy's new-found love

Amy was so excited to get the opportunity to participate in the middle school musical. I thought she might want to do set design, but she decided on stage crew. That meant staying after school a couple of days a week, coming in for a couple of Saturdays, and being at school for hours during "tech week" (the week the play starts). The show was "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" and the kids all did a terrific job!

Stage crew, along with art teacher Mr. Kruczkowski,
working hard on a Saturday afternoon, helping out the set design team.

It was really great for Amy to get involved with the "drama kids" and find a space to belong. I think she gained a lot of confidence and more of a sense of belonging by being part of the play.

Everybody taking a bow, stage crew in the back.

Since my friend (and mom to Amy's pal Morgan) Valerie was the parent lead with the play, I also had the chance to do a lot of helping out - selling tickets, setting up snacks for the kids, and helping with the end of play party. It was exhausting, but fun!

Mr. K, who was Amy's art teacher earlier in the year and was the lead staffer for stage crew, was so glad that Amy and a couple other six graders had such a great time with the play, since now he knows he's got lots of kids to help with the next two years' plays!

Grateful that the kids' school has such fantastic opportunities for the kids!

A note from Dad

For Spring Break 2017 we spend 3 days on the beach in Sandbridge, VA. But the best quality time was after we got home. The house cleaning people were scheduled to be at the house at 8:30 a.m. so we wanted to get out of the house for about an hour and a half to let them work. We decided to walk to Starbucks for breakfast. That's about an hour round trip plus half hour to sit and eat. Amy was down with it and of course Reed grumbled but it turned out wonderful. It was a cool, sunny morning and both kids seemed to actually enjoy it (though they would never admit so). Amy talked about the musical Hamilton the whole way and Reed was curious and excited to prove that he knew of a better walking route.

And this from Mom:

Great minds think alike, because I was going to write something similar. Highlight was when Reed and I got a little too far ahead of Tod and Amy, he said "I can't hear Amy anymore so I think we're getting too far ahead of them." LOL - she really did talk the entire way. 

An all-around awesome morning!

Oh, I miss the book box!

Today I was putting the Easter decorations out and came across the Easter books. It made me so nostalgic! For the "big" holidays, we had collections of books that I added to each year. The kids just loved it when the holiday books came out, and we'd read them over and over during that "season." It feels like it was a million years ago that we'd both spend a half-hour in the kids' rooms each night reading book after book.

We also had the "Book Box" where I collected different books that I thought they'd like. When they'd been particularly good, we'd let them choose a new book or two from the book box. It was the biggest thrill for them! I'd also buy them each several new books that we'd give to them when we went on vacations to keep them occupied (for a little while, at least - Reed reads SO fast, and Amy's pretty quick too). Of course over time I got "less good" at picking books they'd like, and many languished in the book box, waiting to be chosen. Probably a year or more ago I finally gave up and donated all those books to the elementary school. But I hope they have positive memories of the book box, and maybe they'll even continue the tradition one day if they have kids themselves.

Happy happy #12!

Our baby girl has turned 12! Next stop...teenager! Ah, who are we kidding, she's pretty much a teenager already.

Amy has matured so much in the last year. She's better able to take light-hearted ribbing, which is wonderful (she doesn't get furious if we say "there's no post on Sunday," for example). She's thriving in middle school, grade-wise, and has also made lots of new friends. She's just recently started working as part of the stage crew group for the upcoming middle school play, and she's having a lot of fun with that. She's still enjoying taking weekly tennis classes, which just started back up again for the spring. She still loves to read, but has become more narrow in the styles of books she chooses - she very much prefers realistic fantasy (an example she gives is Harry Potter). Amy tends to become what one might call "obsessed" with things - a month or two ago, it was Robin (of Batman and Robin.....not interested in Batman, though) and now she's circled back around to the Percy Jackson book series. She will talk endlessly to us about her obsession, without much regard to whether we're actually interested (or even listening, probably!). She still draws constantly, and she still won't really share her drawings with us (so sad!). She is still a collector of "stuff" which usually ends up in piles all around the house.

We're so proud of Amy and all that she's become! We think we'll keep her. :)

"I am my only teacher."

This popped up in my Facebook "On this day" from 4 years ago:

Just found an old notebook from when Reed was in 2nd grade. He wrote a note to his teacher which said (among other things) "You help me learn in fall, winter, and spring, but not in summer. Summer I am all alone. I am my only teacher." Hysterical.

Typical day at our house

I often find myself wishing for a magic way to go back and observe a day in each year of my life. Really see how my days went, how I actually acted (could be frightening!), and probably appreciate it all a lot more in hindsight.

So with that in mind I thought I'd write about a 'typical' day in our house now.

On weekdays, usually Reed gets up on his own, otherwise we wake him up a few minutes after 7. I am not sure Amy's ever woken up on her own at 7 (maybe once in a blue moon), so usually we wake her up at 7. And then again at 7:10. And then again at 7:20.

I leave for work at 6:30 a.m. on the days that I go in to the office (Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays). So Tod's home with the kids, and usually they eat breakfast together and prepare for the day. On days when I telework (Wednesdays and Fridays), the kids eat by themselves since I start working (and doing laundry) at 7. Amy likes to get her lunch made and then leave a little early for the bus - right at 8. But Reed likes to wait until nearly the last possible moment to go to the bus stop, which is around the corner - usually at 8:05 on the dot, after he hastily throws his lunch together. (The bus is scheduled to come at 8:07, but amazingly he's never missed it.) Both kids have headphones on pretty much all the while, listening to who knows what.

The bus brings them back home around 3:45 p.m. Reed texts me to say he's home, if it's an office day. If it's a telework day, I'm usually on my way home when he texts, and I get home a little after 4.

Amy does homework if she's got it (Reed almost never has homework...a mystery we don't truly understand, but we don't question since his grades are great). The headphones are again glued to their ears (can you tell that frustrates me?). Both of them have to spend a half-hour outside doing something at least semi-active. Reed tosses the football to himself in the driveway, or sometimes on the trampoline (well he's back to that recently, after a long break). Amy hits tennis balls against the garage or sometimes shoots hoops. Amy is VERY careful to not spend one millisecond more than 30 minutes outside. If they end up outside at the same time, that's inevitably a recipe for disaster and fighting. Sometimes it seems they're still 3 and 5 years old, not 11 and 14.

Then it's back inside where Reed hides out in the living room probably having screen time when he's not supposed to (he very carefully keeps a pillow in his lap to try to keep up the illusion that he's not looking at his phone). Amy's usually at her desk, drawing or doing typing practice tests lately. Or if she can grab the living room couch, she'll be there drawing and listening to whatever she listens to. (There are frequent fights over the couch.) There they stay until dinner's ready. Phones are not allowed in their rooms, so unfortunately they don't want to spend a lot of time there. Tod usually gets home not too long before we eat dinner at 6.

Dinner. The food aspect can be a little fraught. I'm still struggling a little with making meals that work with Amy being vegetarian, and also trying to accommodate Reed's pickiness. It's a challenge. Reed will also complain if I get repetitive with serving his non-favored meals (which are many). Food aside, I think we have pretty good dinner times. Growing up, the TV was usually on during our family dinners, tuned to the Channel 9 news, waiting for the sports report with Glenn Brenner. But we never have the TV on until later in the evening. We talk about our days during dinner, sometimes talk about current events, we talk about what's on our upcoming calendar. Amy talks about Batman (well, more accurate to say she talks about Robin, her current obsession). Once in a while the kids really share things with us about their days or their studies.

After dinner, we're on an even (Amy) / odd (Reed) schedule for the dishes. There is much complaining when one or the other discovers the dishwasher needs to be unloaded (we usually only have to run it every couple of days, so that can be problematic with them switching off days). Their hand-washing skills still leave something to be desired, so we're still working on that. But mostly they've accepted their dish-doing fate and they don't complain as much as they used to.

Then it's on to the coveted screen time for the rest of the evening. Both kids on their separate computers (Amy has a laptop and Reed has a desktop). Reed plays Overwatch these days (a first person shooter game...blech) and I think he still plays Civilization sometimes. He hasn't been playing the X-box One in the basement for quite a while...guess he finally tired of Madden NFL. The super fantastic thing about online gaming is that Reed talks to his friends over the headphones....not loudly, but loud enough that it makes watching TV in the next room a little challenging. That's probably why some of his friends are allowed to have computers in their rooms (we're holding out on that one...too much temptation for gaming when he's not supposed to, and other possible shenanigans that I'm not even going to mention).

Amy is nearly always dual-screening....watching something on her phone, positioned just in front of her laptop, while she draws on the computer. She still doesn't like to share what she's drawn with us, unfortunately. I try not to push it, but I'd love to see what she's doing. I really miss the days when she wanted to show us every thing she'd drawn (and she's always been a prolific artist). Sometimes she watches TV in our room, since we're usually downstairs watching TV.

Yes I guess I should mention what Tod and I are doing in these evenings. Lately after dinner we've been taking Shelby for a 15 minute walk, enjoying the weirdly mild winter we've been having. Then since Tod's working on his Ph.D. through an online program, most days he does school work for an hour or two. I'm usually knee-deep in Facebook (such a time suck), or I edit photos, or watch TV, or read, or this time of year I do Girl Scout cookie business. I piddle around doing whatever it is I do. When Tod's done with school work, we watch TV together. These days it's the opening segments of Stephen Colbert and Seth Myers, or we watch "This is Us," or "The Daily Show" or some comedies. We don't really watch too terribly much TV, since we're usually in bed pretty close to 10.

Back to the kids...they're busy having way too much screen time. Amy showers a little before 9, and is supposed to be in bed at 9, but in the last few days she's taken to reading after she gets in bed, and deciding for herself that she'll go to bed a half-hour after her scheduled bed time. We've been just giving in on that one, because she's reading....she hasn't been doing all that much reading of late. She claims she takes forever to fall asleep, but we don't really know. Reed goes up to shower at 9:30, and the trouble we have is that because the kids' bathroom is right between their rooms, it's super loud in Amy's room so we've been letting Reed shower in our bathroom. Which ties our bathroom up for a half-hour, when frequently we find we'd like to have done our bedtime preparations before 10 and we find ourselves out of luck. We figure eventually he's going to want to shower in the mornings and we'll be rid of this problem. Their bedtimes are 9 p.m. for Amy and 10 p.m. for Reed, with a half-hour extra on weekends.

On weekends if we've got nothing going on, Reed's still usually up at 7:30 or 8. Amy, on the other hand, is our late sleeper. Sometimes even past 9:30 (I'm so jealous!). Then they're allowed to have 3 hours of screen time (WHY did we get in this terrible habit of allowing them so much screen time?!?). They're each supposed to spend at least an hour outside during the day. Amy, again, spends only exactly that much time, and not one second more. Reed gets more bored and will go outside several times a day. We recently had to forbid them from having their phones/headphones on during outside time, because it seemed every time we'd look outside, they'd be standing there fiddling with the phone.

Reed very much wants us to plan absolutely nothing for the weekends. Amy's a little more interested in leaving the house. Both of them have gotten really good about keeping an eye on our family calendar to know what's on the schedule, which is nice.

That's all I can think of. I'll see if Tod has anything to add. Wish I'd thought of doing this kind of documentation many years ago, I think even I will appreciate looking back at it!