~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ composer of his own destiny

Posted on February 9, 2018 by marybethrew

when i was looking back through photos of quinn from 2010 for my previous lifelong learning post, which my hilarious husband said i should have titled two months to read, i found this little drummer boy…

which seemed like a great way to start off this month of lifelong learning, during which quinn took his first music lessons!

this is just before his first lesson, after receiving his new drum pad and bell kit. i can’t help but notice he still likes to march in a circle around the drum, as he was doing with the tinker toys can, and numerous other unpictured objects throughout his life.

checking out his new bells!

first lesson! it also happened to be halloween that day, so he has on his charizard costume. he is having his lessons with the same teacher he has for music during school, and this also happens to be someone rich and i know from the theatre community. he’s a great guy, and seems to appreciate quinn. he had a straightforward plan to suggest for getting him started (including the idea of the snare/mallet percussion starter book and kit). quinn gets to learn snare drum alongside bells, so that he is learning how to read the music for both, and familiarize with the extremes of what a percussionist might delve into, or specialize in later on. when we talked beforehand, quinn was very much interested in drums and rhythm, but was open to the idea of reading notes and playing mallet percussion as well. i told him stories about the girl in my high school band who played mallets, who also played everything all the rest of the percussionists could play, but who got the really special jobs like playing the chimes for the christmas concert, and the steel drums when we played the little mermaid medley. i always admired her versatility, and i think she got to play some of the best parts because of it! he seemed like he liked the idea of being versatile like that.

not too long after his first lesson, quinn had composed his first song, entitled bird song. he was nervous about naming it that, because he felt there may be copyright issues, given that he knew of another song by that name (my little dead head). i assured him that if he wasn’t planning on selling it to anyone yet, he could name it whatever he wanted for now. he relaxed.

he was completely overjoyed that his very own mama had a plain sheet of staff paper already in her possession, and ran off to make “i think about 10 copies should be good for starters.” it is love. he spent some serious time between practicing, then writing his song, playing it, looking at a star wars book of songs i happened to have on hand, then just playing around with no music in front of him. making musical sounds.

one awesome aspect of his musicality is how he ties in emotion, he really has a sense of how certain pieces will make a person feel, and asked me how bird song made me feel when i heard him play it. i told him i felt a little melancholy when i heard it (it was in a minor key) and he was delighted because he had been going for expressing “epic sadness.”

this photo was taken belatedly, but quinn made a linocut stamp of an apple to decorate a birthday card for grammy the previous month, so i wanted to make sure and include this image somewhere. we must have art in our lives!

just a boy with harry potter hair.

parent-teacher conferences were held during this month and it was the first real face-to-face i had with quinn’s teacher, because i really coasted through the first part of the school year and had yet to volunteer in the classroom. i was delighted with our conference. she seemed equally delighted with quinn, and her main commentary had to do with hoping she will be able to keep him challenged. she is thrilled about his love of the fantasy genre, because she feels it is the genre with the most potential for finding books on his reading level and also with appropriate content for his age and interests. because, his star test results indicate that:

“quinn would be best served by instructional materials prepared at a ninth grade level.”

i love his teacher even more for understanding how that test score is to be taken with huge grains of salt, that its usefulness is limited, that while it is true that his level is high, a person reading at that level should be tested using… a test prepared for someone at that level, not the grade 5 level, and she had already determined she would test him only the required beginning and end of year times, and refrain from having him test at intervals throughout the school year with the rest of the class. hurray for less testing, and especially hurray for a teacher with mindfulness of the limitations of testing.

she generally seems very experienced, has great ideas for helping quinn with things like time management and awareness (she felt that just letting him know about how long an assignment might be expected to take, helped him keep it close to the time, rather than dragging on and succumbing to overthinking; that she picked up this observation in a few short weeks was telling as well.) she seemed to be pleased about having him as a student, and optimistic about a good school year. i feel we got really lucky, and it makes so much sense that quinn wanted to keep all options open and let the universe put him in the right classroom for him for this year.

in early november, quinn spent nearly an entire weekend typing a novel inside of a book inside of a minecraft world. it is an epic adventure, and i need to transcribe it from the minecraft book so it can be read by the world. we discussed that it may make more sense for him to type future novels into a document instead, so he does not monopolize my computer for entire weekends.

he had a theatre workshop on veteran’s day and he had a blast. parents were invited in the afternoon to watch the skits they put together, which was very impromptu because the plot was dictated by whatever the kids wrote, separately, on index cards labeled who, what, where, when, why and quinn’s group had criteria something like: who: pregnant lady with mood swings, where: in a hospital, when: during world war ii, and i cannot recall the what and why… quinn’s character was steve, a wounded soldier. he was off to one side being wounded, and any time he would say a line, the rest of the cast would chorus, “no, steve!” or “shut up, steve!” and he got many laughs. the pregnant woman did pretty well, in a sitcom sense, of being moody and in labor, and then another girl her same size was the baby, which provided great physical comedy to have the “mom” oohing and ahhing her new baby on her lap. then there was drama over who the actual father was, and that was a bit confused in the dialogue but funny, and finally, quinn-steve chimed in, “can i be the father?” “NO, STEVE!” and that was the end of the play. ridiculously funny for throwing it together in 40 minutes. he obviously had fun, because then they were allowed to leave if parents were present (which i was) but they could also play one more game since there were still 15 minutes left, and of course, he wanted to play the game.

quinn’s class took a field trip to see the movie wonder, and i finally got to do something helpful for his class, and went along as a chaperone. holy moly, i had no idea i should have brought a box of tissues with me. the kids had read the book in preparation for seeing this wonderful movie with its profound and multi-faceted and in-depth discussion of differences and universals and bullying and kindness.

later in the month, quinn attended a seminar with sifu diaz, our sifu’s seventh degree black belt sifu. last time they met, they both had ponytails, and this time they both had haircuts. sifu diaz is very good with the kids, and it’s great to get a different perspective on the same techniques. i always love doing that when learning yoga and feel i learn more when i can see it from different teachers’ persepectives, so the same goes for karate.

we got to have ruby over thanksgiving break, when i had quinn home for the week. our days were game-filled and puppy-enhanced.

tinker crate! quinn received an awesome present from aunt lau, a tinker crate subscription. the first box in our subscription was a make-your-own spin-art machine! obviously, quinn had fun, both building and wiring up his machine, and then making some art!

we had a mellow thanksgiving at our home, with rich’s mom and daughter and son-in-law, and ruby and quinn. quinn helped with pie baking as usual, and was entirely responsible for the apple slicing for the apple pie. we also had pumpkin and pecan pies, and a whole bunch of other food, though i was aiming for low-key and low-waste this time around, and i think i accomplished my goal.

it’s hard to keep up with quinn’s literary journey these days. he is rapidly devouring the entire body of work written by rick riordan. he is getting caught up on the trials of apollo, and simultaneously demolishing the first two books in the magnus chase series. as a follow-up to that, he has of course decided to study norse mythology in greater detail, just as he did with percy jackson and greek mythology, and introduced me to the ice cow goddess audhumla, my new spirit animal. some quick-read minecraft fan fiction gets inserted into the book pile as well. i bet we are in the running for most frequent flier miles on the inter-library loan system for our local public library, and 4 out of 5 librarians at our branch are on a first name basis with quinn. this kid loves to read!

wedding ~ prayer flags

Posted on October 25, 2017 by marybethrew

i have so many things to say about our wedding that i have decided not to worry about being organized in how i start to tell about it. i’m just going to share bits and pieces that come to mind, and if i keep doing that, maybe i will eventually cover a fraction of the love and beauty and amazingness that day (and the whole week surrounding that day) held for us.

this little bit was an idea that came to me thanks to a group of online radical mama friends i connected with when quinn was a baby (one of whom made my wedding dress, another who came and took photos at the wedding, several of whom still read this blog). at one point in time, i remember us each creating a square to contribute to a long string of prayer flags for one friend’s birthday. since rich and i knew that quite a few of our far away friends and family members would be unable to join us for our wedding, but who would love to be here in spirit, we thought this would be a way for everyone to be included, while also providing some colorful decorations for our day. this was the text we included in our rsvp card, which is how the flags made their way back to us one by one.

“we will decorate our reception tent with prayer flags created by our guests. please add your words, drawings, or blessings to the fabric square and enclose it when you return this rsvp. we’ll let the breeze carry the prayers and blessings of our community skyward, and create a cheerful banner to brighten up our day. (sharpie marker is fine, we are not asking for fine embroidery, though feel free to be creative – paint, sew, embellish as you like!)”

cotton gauze, a yard of each color of the rainbow, just after being dyed.

cut fabric squares, ready for inclusion in invitations.

we underestimated how much we would be blown away by each and every one of the flags we got back.

quinn’s mandala flag.

an amazing dragon family.

mom and dad rew. quinn insisted his be right next to grammy’s when the flags got sewn together.

each time, the exact right thing just seemed to show up.

most of the flags made a string long enough to stretch all along one whole side of our big reception tent!

each flag has its own story and i am sure not all flags are visible in these photos… but the way we got to receive each one over the course of months, expectantly walking to the mailbox on a “date” each afternoon to see if we got another one, practically giddy if we got more than one in a single day! each one got our undivided attention as it was received, and we were amazed each time with the love and care put into the thoughts and artwork applied to our flags. each one was a blessing to receive, and it was a joy for me to add each one to the long ribbon; a visible and tangible representation of our great abundance of loved ones.

that radical mama photographer is also handy with a needle and thread, and hung the last few stragglers up just above our head table while i was having my hair done. luckily i had multiple photographers to make sure such details were captured!

there will be many more flowers in other posts, but i loved the way the prayer flags framed this image of early morning on our wedding day.

the whole day was full of amazing things like having a rainbow set of prayer flags show up to hang directly behind us, fully put together by people who love us. i didn’t even lay eyes on these particular flags until they were already sewn and hung up!

i love these pictures of rich giving his toast, and me laughing hysterically. humor is pretty foundational to our relationship.

and also, kindness. here we are feeding each other the yummiest cake ever baked, backed by om symbols, a phoenix and st. mary magdalene, on whose feast day we happened to get married; my catholic friend responsible for the mary flag wrote in her rsvp that she is “the patron saint of women, among other things: glovesmakers, converts, tanners, hairdressers and more!”

later in the afternoon, it was time to turn on the fireflies.

now that we have been married for three months (as of sunday!) we are still enjoying our prayer flags, hung up around our bedroom. it’s such a cheerful and colorful reminder of all of our friends and family coming together (physically or in spirit) to celebrate with us.

~two months in the life of a lifelong learner~ becoming a dragon

Posted on January 5, 2017 by marybethrew

10-23 to 12-23

quinn and i collaborated once again to create a fun halloween costume: bulbasaur the pokemon.

we took quinn’s fourth grader free state park pass on the road and hung out at the yaquina head lighthouse one afternoon to watch waves and marvel at their enormity.

quinn’s fourth grade class took a hike and toured the community college.

reading… too many books to make an exhaustive list! he has been reading the red wall series at his dad’s, so we listened to the audio book and he borrowed the book from the library to finish when the last cd was scratched, then ended up re-reading the entire novel; he spent more time with calvin and hobbes, and i could tell even if i hadn’t seen him reading it, because he mused one day, “i wonder if anyone on mars is looking out and saying i wonder if there’s anyone on that planet with all the blue on it.” he read all 8 greek gods graphic novels owned by our library; he could be found spread out on the floor with newspaper comics on several occasions; he read an article in national geographic about a dinosaur fossil found trapped in amber with complete feathers (!) that a friend had shared on facebook. all of this in addition to listening to the last of the heroes of olympus, then switching to harry potter on audio while reading a variety of other books (the latest diary of a wimpy kid, trials of apollo, and a few other graphic novels.)

quinn attended another seminar with mr. sepulveda at aurora martial arts in corvallis. he had a good time, and learned a lot once again.

he became a certified bed making technician

games a-plenty these days! pictured are a fraction of those played and created: a pirate card game called loot, a pokemon role-play-game of his own invention (here he is drawing up a character attribute sheet), pokemon go, scrabble, thanksgiving scattergories, numerous computer games (lots of knights, forging of armor, settlements, that type of thing going on in recent games), we learned to play settlers of catan at long last, and then got to play it again, and quinn drew up his own set of catan hexagon cards, and played quite a few games with his buddy luke, including risk (thank you, luke, for one less game of risk i have to play!) there were numerous other games not pictured!

the recent book fair, as always, was a big deal for quinn, and he bought himself a book about coding games in scratch (a kid-friendly programming platform). he was telling me about a game he is going to code in scratch about pirates, and the pirates start at the lowest rank and work up to becoming first mate. but then the only way they can become captain is “if the captain is slain, or the captain resigns.” others might say “is killed/leaves” but quinn’s vocabulary strikes again. my pirate name for the game is barnacle beth the brave, on board the ship the blue bottlenose. so far we are still playing it all in quinn’s mind, but he has big ideas!

in fact, he made a list of “jobs to have when i grow up,” and game designer is on the list.

a musician
a famous kenpo teacher (karate)
a paleontologist
a game designer (it came up in conversation when he formulated an idea to play pokemon go as a d&d style role play game, with character sheets for the trainers; we can hide pokemon in imaginary maps (not realistic ones like our back yard, so this is a different game but similar to what he originally invented) and roll dice for how many pokeballs, etc. i told him he always had such great ideas for coming up with new games, and he thought being a game designer seemed like something he could do.)

in his journal list by the above title, he wrote numbers 1-23 all the way down the page. i am looking forward to seeing what other “jobs to have” he comes up with!

number one on the list: musician. time to get him some music lessons!

enjoying green eggs and ham, sam i am.

enjoying time with family at thanksgiving.

baking sugar cookies to share with friends! he got creative with the cookie cutters, and generously sprinkled his star tree with “snow” powdered sugar.

when i searched “cookie” in my media files to see whether i had already uploaded the recent cookie photos, this is the one that came up. my cookie helper, in his mini form. i can’t believe his whole legs, including feet, fit on top of the counter…

outside time, stolen bits of fresh air on sunny days when we could get them. including a day spent at the lab with mama (school conference days). he also got in some cursive handwriting practice that day.

i attended his student-led conference, and there were writing samples, creative projects (3-D self-portrait, map of his special place), goal-setting plan for the school year, and the last item on the conference agenda was, “ask your family to take you out for ice cream to celebrate!” i did. he ordered cookies and cream and vanilla.

another school field trip, this time to the aquarium and for a tour of the noaa vessel rainier. the ship tour was fascinating, and the kids asked some really great questions about the use of sonar to map the sea floor. we came up with an analogy of the “layers” created by the sonar, that if you made a fort with chairs and blankets, then lifted the blanket off of the chair legs, keeping all the dips and peaks in place, the blanket would act like a layer of sonar data.

science projects at school: kinetic and potential energy using string, straws and balloons, and then mechanical rollers made from cups, rubber bands, and straws, trying to roll a certain distance and stop in the “sweet spot”, both of which i got to help out with in the classroom. i liked how she had the kids write up their results, but modeled for them how to do that on the overhead projector, and i liked how she sat down with individual kids who were having trouble getting started. that included quinn, but when she sat down and asked him about his potential/kinetic energy string/straw/balloon experiment, he had brilliant insights to share about how “the air wanted to come out of the balloon”, and then after he’d gotten to tell them to her, he was able to go forward with putting them on paper. i also got to sit in on a presentation of why a class award, if won, should be spent on obtaining a bearded dragon. quinn is a natural at public speaking; he does not inherit that from me. also in school learning: essay publishing, and of course, the dab.

one of my favorite features of quinn’s classroom is the mood meter. each day (and at various times throughout the day) his teacher asks them to write on a sticky note something that is on their mind and place it on the mood meter, which has four quadrants. the kids choose where they are feeling along the continua of energy, from high to low, and pleasantness, from happy to sad. where they intersect along these two axes (bet they don’t realize they are working their coordinate plane skills… sneaky) is where they place their sticky note. i walked in one afternoon and found quinn’s in the far happy quadrant, reading, “i feel happy because i am going to my mom’s house after school.” insert all the rainbow heart emojis.

when you walk up to the school building, quinn’s classroom is the one with all the shades open (fluorescent lights off, sunlight pouring in) and a peace sign in the window. that’s how i can tell i asked for the right teacher.

while i’m singing her praises, i will also share that she builds a yoga flow into the start of each school day. quinn demonstrated one morning’s “flow” that they did, and as a yogi myself i can see that they have learned quite a lot in their daily practice. it was fun to watch, because he is such a gangly, bouncy, and angular string bean that he just springs into position and names the pose, then springs into the next one, with all of his bones sticking out every which way. he knows most of the poses by their traditional names, tree, triangle, mountain, but a few have obviously been made more kid-friendly. low lunge is “dragon” and then becomes twisting dragon when he plants his shoulder behind his knee like no adult could ever do at the rate he does it. i like the “wash away” pose they do at the beginning, crossing their mid-line, always good for brains. the way he gets into triangle pose… priceless… had to be captured on video.

also in reading, i assigned quinn some advent reading. a little background on the “you are brave” affirmation…

one night recently, quinn got up to use the bathroom at 3am, and came and got me to re-tuck him in. rich mentioned it to him in the morning, to point out logically that he is brave enough to walk around at night with no lights on (downstairs to our room, back up to the bathroom because it was actually an emergency, then back down again to retrieve me), so he shouldn’t feel scared to go in the bathroom during the day with lights on throughout the house. rich also put in that one day he’ll be able to get back into bed without even waking anyone up. after rich went off to shower, i translated for quinn that rich wanted quinn to know that he is very brave! that seemed to unfurrow his brow, the look that sometimes follows in the aftermath of a “talk” with rich. i then reassured him that i will miss it in a few years when he no longer comes and gets me to help him back to bed, adding that i’m glad it’s not something that happens every night anymore. we chatted about when he was a baby/toddler and woke me up multiple times every night, and he thought that was funny and wanted to know all about it. then he was finished eating breakfast. into the bathroom he marched, hands covering his ears, and then i heard, “i’m brave!” and the sound of peeing… with the light still turned off.

back at the vacation house quinn would ask me to accompany him to the bathroom to help him turn on the light. it was around a corner and through a dark small hallway which had a light switch which the rest of us didn’t turn on to get to the bathroom but he did. he would turn on all the switches on the way to the bathroom, but the switch for the bathroom light required you to go inside and reach behind the door for it (poor design, granted) and so he never liked it and always felt scared to go in and pee no matter how many conversations he had with rich on the subject.

since we’ve been at dragon house 2.0, he has been fine with bathroom use and turning on the light himself, it’s not down a dark hallway, the light switch isn’t hidden behind door, and it’s on the same floor as our living room/his bedroom/kitchen. he does, however, often cover his ears (inexplicably, unless you consider it a form of sight-sound synesthesia) while he walks into the bathroom until he gets the light on (which i think he must do with his elbow!)

after i explained to quinn that rich was trying to point out that quinn is obviously brave enough to walk around in the dark, because he has seen him do it, quinn seemed to grasp it with that positive spin. leaving the light turned off wasn’t exactly the intended result, and indeed i told him he needed to turn it on when it came to face washing, so he could see his grubby face in the mirror to get it clean, but i was happy that the internalized message was affirmative.

courage and indomitable spirit… yes, he has them. he is brave. he endured a particularly grueling belt test and promoted to his green belt just before christmas.

still bringing the smiles.

elfing. relaxing in the happy spot on christmas eve, just back from his dad’s for two whole weeks! i picked him up the afternoon of the 23rd, stuffed him full of food, had him take his first bath in two weeks, and then he slept for 15 hours, so it’s no wonder he looks so refreshed on the morning of christmas eve. i was just remembering that we called my rocking chair “the happy spot” back in the day, when he fit in it on my lap just a little bit better than he does now. we’ve shared some quality snuggle time in it this week, in spite of his gangliness. he also helped me elf together some friend presents, and wrapped the gift he chose for luke himself.

christmas morning! a glorious sunny day, spent with family.

after explaining (with hand gestures) how one would make a robotic bb-8 and what his motion is like, quinn pulled out his birthday present piper and showed off having built his own computer. that brief detour enabled me to show him that scratch is already loaded onto his piper… so i imagine there will be some game programming updates in future lifelong learning posts. after a while he continued opening presents, including lots of pokemon cards, some legos, and a few books.

an epic pokemon battle occurred, during which the rest of us sat around shaking our heads in awe of the way he could backtrack several steps of the battle and change the outcome, seeing it all in his mind like a chess game. he also built k2so, a droid we all recently grew fond of watching star wars: rogue one.

sun and kitties.

pokemon and wrist warmers.

he’s holding the dungeons and dragons player’s handbook, his 300+ page present from grammy and grampy, which he obviously loves! he has spent lots of time reading it and designing new characters with it since. he also got to meet the artist who did the cover art (and a few of the pieces on the pages, as well as many magic cards, one of which quinn was in possession of…) because he’s my former boss’s nephew. he got these items autographed, but the best part was listening to these 20-something guys talking with quinn about d and d adventures, and beyond that, relating things like, “yeah i was always being told i needed to pay attention, and instead i was drawing.” others who don’t fit all the molds. they exist, and they’re okay. your people are out there in the world, quinn. i love that in answer to my question, “how big was the original painting,” tyler answered, “i painted it digitally, so it’s actually of infinite size,” and quinn just kind of nodded like, yeah, i get that. kids these days.

for quinn, it’s not always drawing that steals his attention, but he is often “out there” in his brain, creating in some other realm. i think it’s great for him to meet people who took their creative talents and made a living. i also love that he came home and was inspired to actually draw his new character (a wizard) and the character’s pet owl.

we got in some play time with buddies over the holiday break.

we’re transitioning right now to a new karate dojo and instructor, and so far that has all been going very smoothly. we got to go to extra classes over the break, and although quinn may backtrack a little bit on belt rank to catch up on some curriculum, he seems very game to make this overall positive change, and his belt rank will now be considered adult instead of junior, so in many ways, he will come out ahead. he will also get to practice teaching karate, himself, which is one of his stated goals. his new teacher mentioned that karate students naturally start out as tigers, fierce and impulsive, but as they mature and progress in their practice, become dragons, with more tenacity and wisdom. i like the metaphor, of course, and though i have nothing against tigers, i do have a special place in my heart for dragons. i see the maturity of which he speaks starting to develop in this young lad, who has become reinvigorated for karate in the past two weeks. while i was anticipating some resistance to this fairly substantial change, he has shown an amazing amount of resilience and perspective and has gone with the flow. just another aspect of amazing lifelong learning to look forward to in 2017!

~rainbow mondays~ finding the color

Posted on December 5, 2016 by marybethrew

colorless: right around this time of year, things start to feel about like this for me: washed out gray birds in a gray sky flying south without me. my rainbow practice becomes increasingly important for me to strive to do, so i can remember there is actually still a lot of color in the world!

even if it’s artificial coloring. spoiler alert: all the kids in our lives are getting playdough for christmas! quinn helped me make the first four colors yesterday.

rainbow: mindful tea arranging. this way the tea becomes a self care exercise multiple times.

red: one of our frequent visitors.

red: cranberries getting ready to be sauce, for what turned out to be a very mellow and laid back thanksgiving with more of our kids than we thought we’d get to have around.

orange: glad there are still some of these hanging on.

orange: false chantarelle in our forest. still hoping for some true chantarelles but no luck yet.

orange: quinn’s week off of school for thanksgiving was a week of much game playing. after enough rounds of loot and risk, i decided i wanted a word game, so we invented thanksgiving scattergories.

yellow: apple tree leaves.

green: extra water in the bayou over the past week or so.

green: the first of my rainbow terrace plants has sprouted! i planted 3 bleeding heart roots at the base of the apple trees, and they are already up! i hope they did not jump the gun, and that they do well next season.

blue: this kid makes me happy.

blue: i re-purposed my baby baptism blue jar and baby’s breath as a thanksgiving centerpiece. never mind that it looks more like christmas than thanksgiving! that’s what i could find in the yard for a fresh cut arrangement.

purple: mashed potatoes at thanksgiving ended up lavender, since i had a few purple potato stowaways in the mix.

purple: deep in thought in mama’s purple chair using mama’s purple computer. for christmas, i’m thinking: new socks!

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

~rainbow mondays~ bulbasaur, bayou, beets, blue squash

Posted on October 31, 2016 by marybethrew

do you ever just think your food is so pretty that you take it outside, arrange a (rainbow) still life, and take a picture?

red: i found this stack of dried leaves curling up in my car from the day quinn and i went to our karate day camp and broke boards. we took a walk at lunch time, and he talk-played a ninja game with me and we picked up leaves.

red: sweetgum tree at camp boss’s house. i went to take pictures of her cubs in a brief sunlit window between extended dance remix rain showers.

orange: pretty star shaped leaves.

yellow: golden beets, among friends. also this week in yellow (not pictured): mama earned her yellow belt in karate!

green: romanesco, cousin of broccoli and cauliflower, but with much cooler florets – 3-d spirals with texture.

green: cabbage leaf or topographical map of a river?

green: reminder.

green: i am proud to have finished this year’s costume well before the deadline. it wasn’t even 2 am, and it was finished on thursday night, allowing for this cute frog photo shoot before he went to his dad’s on friday. this year’s pokemon is bulbasaur, in case you were wondering.

blue: mini blue winter squash make me happy. they also fill a crucial role in the vegetable rainbow, for blue veggies are rare!

blue: hawk in the blue sky over camp boss’s house.

purple: napa cabbage in red violet. what a beautiful batch of produce this week!

brown: my fiance and i happened upon this bayou wildlife on a walk we took recently. bayou walks have been less frequent, due to play rehearsals and rain, but we were rewarded for sticking with the tradition on this particular day.

black: one last produce photo, a black radish that i altered with my zester. much quicker than a jack-o-lantern, so i will chalk it up to self care, just like this post. self care for the win!

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

~the adventures of flat bride~ chapter one ~ introducing flat bride!

Posted on May 2, 2016 by marybethrew

pull up a comfortable chair and sit your inner child down for a tea party and a story.

there once was a little girl named mary beth, and she dreamed of one day meeting a handsome man, falling in love, and getting married and living happily ever after. she was a well-rounded child and had many other interests, but when she was thinking about her grown up life, romance and getting married were a big deal to her, and she spent time in between piano lessons, barn chores, and softball practice, writing and illustrating love stories, planning the details of her wedding, making long lists of first-and-middle names for any number of boy-and-girl children, and designing the gown she would one day wear to walk down the aisle. then she’d run off to collect tadpoles in the pond or build a lego kingdom on the living room floor with her brothers.

her dress designing drawings one day took a bit more shape in the form of a nine-and-a-half inch tall bride made of paper and dressed in lace, fabric, beads, yarn, gauze, and crayola marker make-up. her veil was 12 inches long, almost 3 inches longer than her actual height.

introducing: flat bride!

this bride paper doll was dressed, of course, in white, with a few pink yarn accents at the waist, sleeves, and hair. the skirt was gathered at one side, to reveal a lacy layer underneath, and the lace matched that at her neckline and along her sleeves. her brown hair hung long, and she wore white high heeled shoes. i am pretty sure the lacy fabric for the sleeves came straight out of grandma rew’s attic. i can smell the musty, hot mingling of cedar and moth balls as if i am opening the clackety metal latch and peering up those steep, paint-chipped stairs now.

the little girl was probably 9 years old or so when she made this bride doll. we’ll call her “flat bride.” aside from the obvious flatness of her physical features, which coincide with my own lack of cleavage, you’ve heard of flat stanley, right? no relation. but stay tuned for blog updates about her travels around the world, in the style of the flat stanley travels you may have seen or participated in. also, i am currently formulating flat bride’s travel itinerary, so let me know if you’re interested in hosting her! i plan to post candid thoughts about whatever comes to mind as she goes off to see the world and sends back pictures of her adventures. your only jobs as host are to send me pictures of her time with you, and send her on to the next host on her itinerary. you’re also welcome to guest post if you’re so inclined, and supply your own candid thoughts about whatever comes to mind when you have a nine-and-a-half inch tall manifestation of nine-year-old mb’s romance obsession in your hands. come on, it’ll be fun.

flat bride currently resides in oregon. she was unearthed on a trip to new york in 2014, and the grown up mary beth showed it to her grown up practically-fiance, who laughed and laughed. every now and then, when they talk about the wedding they will one day have, he sometimes brings up flat bride, and the folder full of wedding plans tucked away by a little girl long, long ago, in a land far, far away. he seems to imply that there is very little planning left to do. grown up mb overlooks his teasing because he is the most wonderful prince in all the land.

here is an exhaustive list of the contents of the folder in which flat bride was found: a list of wedding guests, the full lyrics to the song the wind beneath my wings, bridesmaid dress design drawings: one each for spring, summer, and autumn, (though not winter; apparently young mb had already ruled out a winter wedding), with notes on the side about throwing birdseed, and a drawing of a very fancy wedding cake with tiers and pillars and bells and icing roses and a bride and groom reaching for one another on top. it’s clear that little girl mary beth would have chosen wedding colors along the same lines as shelby from steel magnolias: “blush and bashful”; or as her mama, m’lynn would drawl, “her colors are pink and pink.” (actually, one of the bridesmaid dresses has written in the margins: “dusty rose and either candy pink or baby pink.” golly, how would i ever have decided between those two shades! pink was definitely my signature color at one time.)

bridesmaid dresses; there are seasonal considerations, after all

flat bride in profile on the oregon coast in springtime

flat bride decides to take a walk down to the intertidal zone

residing in the same folder are two other items. one is a piece of cardboard on which little girl mary beth had copied down chinese characters from her library books. sixty-three of them, to be exact, drawn in a nine-by-seven grid, some of them with translation, and others without. in addition to her foreign language studies, little mb was also studying geology, using the how and why wonder book of rocks and minerals (copyright 1960), most specifically, the “identification chart of major specimens” on the back cover. two carefully traced copies (one colored in, one half-colored) of said chart are with the book, archaeological artifacts of a girl who was suddenly possessed by the need to draw bridesmaid dresses mid-geological-study. and maybe also foreshadowing her future with a man whose parents took him on geological family vacations every summer of his childhood?

maybe you never dreamed of marrying a fairy-tale prince, and most likely even if you did make a 9-inch tall bride doll, you did not keep her forever and ever and find her again in your thirties. maybe you had dreams of marriage, maybe you didn’t. maybe you are married, maybe not. maybe you did marriage, and have closed up shop in your heart, unwilling to run the risk of it being trampled upon again. maybe that’s how you felt a year ago, but this year cautious optimism stirs. maybe you are foregoing the marriage tradition in favor of a less traditional relationship, maybe something that doesn’t fall neatly into one of the relationship status options supplied by facebook. well, this series is about exploring the tangled web of thoughts that arise on this large continuum of a subject, for me, my flat bride hosts who feel like sharing any candid thoughts, and even for unsuspecting people standing near me who i might chance to overhear on this subject.

anemone gazing

“her colors are pink and pink”

because, let’s face it. love is as universal a subject as there ever was. and i think somewhere, deep inside us all, is a wish for a happily-forever-after ending. your archetype for that might look slightly different from mine, but i’ll bet it’s not any less vulnerable than a 30-year-old paper doll traveling in a padded envelope. i’ll also bet it’s every bit as resilient, in spite of all the bumps along the journey.

a month or two in the life of a lifelong learner ~ quintuple blast!

Posted on March 16, 2016 by marybethrew

christmas happened! it was a big day for legos, pokemon, and games… why does it feel weird to be posting this in the middle of march? ah, well. this post concerns the time from december 23 through february 23, spanning both christmas and birthday, so it’s no wonder i have been too busy to keep things up to date!

the board game risk was a special request and rich got it for quinn for christmas. we all played that very day and haven’t played again since, but world domination is truly right up his alley, as he suspected.

bart wants in on the lego fun.

in anticipation of christmas, i convinced quinn that we should clean up the lego area and we worked together to achieve the above state of “ready for more legos”. thank goodness i had the presence of mind to keep all of the legos out of the storage garage when we began our long vacation… in the foreground, you can see the stack of veggie trays we’ve accumulated from thrift stores that make sorting through lego pieces a lot easier when you’re looking for that certain one, and provide a way of keeping them just ever so slightly up off the floor. (in theory.)

during a bike ride to the jetty we encountered a helicopter flying crazy loops dangerously close to the bridge, and realized, “they ain’t from around here.” it turned out it was the film crew for the new tv spinoff of the deadliest catch, capturing the departure of the lady law, a local crab boat (a friend’s husband was on board, and rich has worked on that boat with his welding torch; just to give a sense of the small town we’re talking about here).

i got quinn his own journal just before new year’s day, and made him some writing prompt cards to choose from on days he can’t think of what to write. he loves it! he decided to write his own ideas mostly, and has filled quite a few pages. writing at bedtime seems to be a calming activity for him. he also got a karate journal so he can keep track of his karate accomplishments and practices. his writing has come such a long way during this school year.

quinn helped me play with my own new years’ day project. i spent the day with my exact-o knife, cutting out some new bokeh shapes for my camera. he was especially fond of the lego guys and dragons, shown here.

some of quinn’s recent photography work. i was feeling pretty crappy the day he took this photo, and bart had crawled into my lap (he’s a healing kitty). quinn spends weeks at a time not thinking about photography, but every now and then will just *need* my camera, or my phone, quick! here are a few of his other recent shots:

movie studio update! it is about time for another long-awaited stop motion movie, don’t you think? here are some “making of” images, and you can watch the newest movie below!

arctic 2 quest for the crystals by quinn’s movie studio; grab your popcorn!

lots of reading, snuggling, drawing, studying, building of lego dragons. he drew a really cool band of musicians for himself on graph paper with many different instruments. it’s no wonder he’s into music as i’m always making up songs to sing him, like good morning boopaloo (nobody knows that song but him and me) and the grubby song, which is reserved for bath time inspiration.

in other personal hygiene news this month, the tooth fairy came, in spite of the fact that the tooth was not just lost, but also lost. quinn lost his special 21st tooth (most of your kids have 20, but quinn always had 21!) and the extra tooth came out in some mysterious way during his school day and was never found. the tooth fairy must have known it was a big deal to him to lose that one, so she wrote him a special letter, left him some glittery one dollar bills, and some bigger kid toothbrushes and tooth flossers shaped like animals. also, here’s a gratuitous baby photo.

he got a new karate bag and sparring gear. as a purple belt he moved up in sparring level and now needs to wear extra padding to practice. i got him a pair of prescription sports glasses and am so glad i did! i don’t think his regular glasses would still be intact in just a few months of advanced sparring, and i like that his eyes are protected… quinn has gotten very good at folding his karate uniform and keeping his gear in good shape. the uniform folding has also helped him with his newly adopted chore of doing his own laundry. he is now a pro, and i think he takes pride in knowing how to do it all by himself.

we did a simple machines project in his classroom, as part of the local school science fair. i acted as “science fair mentor” every friday afternoon, and then hung out at the huge science fair exhibition night (held at my place of work) and got to greet the kids coming and going as they showed off their work to their parents.

of course, he’s no stranger to using simple machines in his creative endeavors. (shown here on the movie set, constructing pulley mechanisms to lift his helicopters off the ice and lower them down for a landing.)

jan 23-feb 23

same wonderful posture as his mama, sigh. same need for paper and pencil to always be within reach, grin.

we consciously made an effort to be in the wild whenever possible.

sometimes he brings up a topic from calvin and hobbes that i recognize, such as, “when you look at your reflection in a puddle, do you ever wonder whether you’re actually the reflection, and your reflection is really you?” (while we walked to the wind chimes and took pictures of cherry blossoms.)

on his first tip test as a purple belt, quinn, and many other of the students in the advanced (purple through brown belt) class, did not fully earn their tips. (each increment of curriculum earns you a “tip” which is a band of black or red tape on the end of your belt to mark progress.) it takes longer to earn tips as an advanced student; the purple curriculum is simply that much harder than yellow, orange and white, during which quinn always advanced another tip any time he tested. this time, he got “half a tip” as he calls it, which meant he got tape on the other end of his belt, showing that he had indeed been working hard and had learned a lot this round, and would probably get there in the next testing cycle.

he was really upset and stomped off the mat after class, and in my opinion, his dad fueled the upset, both before the test by building up his expectations of advancing, and afterwards by encouraging quinn to quit if he wanted to and claiming that the teacher engaged in “shaming” of the kids.

and this is one more way in which i feel that leaving my son’s strong will intact is a favor that i have done him. he ultimately didn’t want to quit, and once he calmed down enough, he was making magic cards of his karate instructor, “because he’s a black belt!” he knew what he wanted, and had the presence of mind to realize quitting might feel good temporarily, but getting a black belt was his goal, and quitting would make that impossible. he was ready to understand that testing will take longer from here on out. i reminded him that he set a very specific goal to be a green belt by the time he is 11 years old, and helped him realize he was still very much on track to meet that goal, even if purple and blue belt tips take several cycles apiece to earn. he bounced right back to his regular smile-bringer self. even if highly tempting negative choices are presented by someone quinn loves and looks up to, he follows his own internal compass.

during a two-day break from school (i like to call them “can’t afford to keep the lights on days”) quinn attended a theatre workshop for 3rd-8th graders for a whole afternoon. i wanted him to check it out to see if he will want to sign up for week-long theatre day camp this summer, which i was thinking he might enjoy. when i dropped him off, i wasn’t sure if he’d be ready for me to leave right away, but he didn’t even look back once he saw an older boy he knows and likes from karate. when i came to pick him up, he didn’t want to leave, and kept playing the game that was going on, even after his group finished their improvisation performance (pictured on the left). the pictures are awful but you can see his face all lit up nonetheless. he is definitely going to sign up for theatre camp, he says.

i also signed him up for an extracurricular art class on a friday afternoon – he learned to make paper bird masks and use paper folding to add shape and texture to the mask. we have a piece made by the teacher of that class, which is why i knew he’d love it. (the dragon that hangs in our dragon house and was a prop in the first play we got to watch rich perform in after we first met him: the woman who fell from the sky.) once again on drop-off, he saw a friend (from both ols and karate) and i was not needed.

in school, quinn’s teacher is happy with his grades but feels he could accomplish more than he does. they get along well, and he isn’t being harsh on quinn about it. from quinn’s side of things, he has mentioned that the math review (one of the things he accomplishes very little on, daily, but not because he lacks the ability to do so) is “hard” for him, and i think the way in which it is hard is that is under-challenges him. he also seems very unwilling to perform the tasks involved in showing and explaining one’s work in math lessons. instead of writing the expected reflection paragraph explaining how he solved the problem in step-by-step manner, he one day wrote, “i am very very very quick and good at math.” which is, truly, a type of reflection, just not what is expected. i recently learned that his favorite class at school is “walk to math” at first because of the multiplication, but now “because of decimals! and even better, we get to do rounding and adding and subtracting decimals!” yippee skippy! since walk to math placement is based on test scores, i can tell he feels more adequately challenged by the material, hence his love for decimals.

~~~

also in the department of school challenges, quinn is working on some social struggles. there has apparently been an ongoing dynamic with a few of the boys in his class that has been hard for him to shake, and he finally spoke up about it just recently. he had been getting kicked in the knees under the school lunch table by the same two boys every day, and there had also been some pushing and shoving, as well as general bugging/taunting by the boys.

i do everything i can to help quinn speak the language of nonviolent communication, including refraining from labels and judgments, and sticking to the facts in a situation. instead of calling it “being mean” or “bullying”, i feel it’s much more useful to say what was actually done and said, and encourage him to explain what went on in those terms. it makes it easier to move on and find solutions, and harder to get stuck in victim mentality.

i wish i was not the only parent who felt that way. when quinn says, “he kicked me” and i ask “and what happened next” or “and what did you do/say” or “did you ask him to stop?” we can get somewhere. some of this is a matter of quinn taking a while to grasp (because he’s not wired to intuitively grasp social nuance with the same command he has of, say, decimals) things like, “other kids say things just to get a reaction sometimes,” or “i don’t want to be kicked/taunted and it’s okay for me to say that or get help to make it stop.” these are not “givens” in his mind like they might be for other kids. these areas needing extra social scaffolding are more and more spread out all the time, but they remind me of having to spell out for quinn when someone was (good-naturedly) teasing, how to recognize when someone who isn’t familiar with his chosen conversation topic is ready to move on to another subject rather than continue to listen to quinn’s treatise on the subject, or when it’s best to keep your honest opinion of store-bought vs. homemade waffles inside your own head.

still, i think a meeting with quinn’s teacher and my coparent was beneficial, because teacher made my coparent aware (as i already suspected) that quinn does retaliate physically when he is hurt, and is sometimes the one who initiates a physical interaction. this has been an ongoing conversation now for several weeks, and definitely feels like progress is haltingly being made, albeit in a week-on (regroup and progress), week-off (fanning the flame on the neuroses) sort of rhythm.

my mom bestowed a bit of wisdom on me after her years of teaching first and then third grade. i may butcher her words, but the gist is that in first grade, kids are still playing side by side. in third grade, they are now interested in being friends, having friends, exploring friendship… “but they are the worst friends you would ever want to have!” she would say, lovingly. the work of being a third grader is learning how to have, and be, a friend, and they’re just not good at it right now. i am trying, in my own way, to give quinn a piece of that helpful insight from grammy, in that, i think these boys are being doofuses (or doofi) but it may be because they admire and like quinn, and want to be his friend, but have no idea how to go about being a friend yet.

~~~

one lazy afternoon, we sat around looking at a big book of animals that belongs to our housemate, and hippos were a hot topic of conversation. apparently, more people are killed by hippos each year than any other animal. quinn flipped through the book and found many other animals to comment on, and we mused about rhinos and pufferfish and other animals and how they’d fare against a hippo (either in a fight or in a race). then asked me for some blank comic strip pages so he could make a comic strip about a race among various different animals. it took several heats of one-on-one animal races, but in the end (spoiler alert!) the hippo won.

magic cards are a new interest, and we bought a few, but he is pretty happy to make his own right now, more than anything.

i can’t remember which came first, the magic card or the egg, but close to when he made the above card, we re-watched the ted talk by jack horner about making a chickensaurus that quinn used as part of his “dinosaurs are birds” presentation at ols.

he also made these awesome pokemon cards of our family. i love the details he paid attention to in deciding on our special attack powers. quintuple blast! watch out, or mama dragon will wise flower you!

sometimes it’s easier to absorb the words you’re reading if your foot is strumming a guitar…

birthday and piper.

i mentioned in the piper post the ongoing work of emotional development… when he asked for the sledgehammer to “solve” a challenge he was facing with his piper, i recommended listening to stories to help him get centered. at dinner a half hour later i asked him if the story time had helped, and he calmly told me with a smile, “yes, and i think it was the right thing! because the story that came on was the day when martin and sylvia were feeling grumpy.”

~~~

one of the boys from school has told him when he wears a ponytail, “you look like a girl.” i am working with him on realizing that what matters is how he feels about himself. i also told him i think that other kids might be jealous and wish they could grow long hair, or have been told things like that by people close to them so they don’t know any better. he is strong in spirit, so i am confident he can handle the taunts and know that he doesn’t have to give them any power over him.

also, i told him who he and his ponytail remind me of:

“imagine all the people sharing all the world…. yoo-hoo-oou, you may say i’m a dreamer, but i’m not the only one…” ~john lennon

my young man has that kind of ability to imagine. i will end by sharing a vision he regaled me with during a meal (i can’t even remember now which one it was, but it wasn’t dessert! that part was all in his vivid imagination.)

” i am eating an ice cream cone, 5 scoops high! and watching 3 movies!” when asked what flavors, he told me two of the scoops were vanilla, two were strawberry and one was caramel. it took him the whole first movie to eat the first two scoops, a second movie was watched while the third and fourth scoops were polished off, and the last movie was the shortest, and is only one scoop long.

i hope you have a day filled with imagination ice cream.

make like a geek ~ piper’s toolbox

Posted on March 9, 2016 by marybethrew

i discovered piper’s toolbox thanks to an instagram post by a mama blogging friend, just in time for it to be the perfect birthday present for my delightfully geeky young man. there are plenty of blog posts covering the background and technical details of this amazing kit for aspiring young computer geeks, so i will just briefly say that this brilliant concept began as a kickstarter campaign and deserves all the success and recognition it has received.

why do i say it’s brilliant? why, because they agree with me, of course! the young people behind piper feel that passive consumption of electronics is not going to do kids any favors when it comes to solving the engineering problems of tomorrow that they will face; the problems we don’t know about yet, so we can’t teach them the solutions, we have to teach them instead how to innovate their own. as a mama who wishes her son to see electronics as a tool to help him create, this kit takes my desire to a new level.

i’ve listed examples of ways i encourage quinn to use technology as a tool, including stop motion animation, studying computer programming and math on khan academy, writing stories and game rules and making game cards. these activities all deviate from passive consumption by making the device and the software perform as tools that help us achieve a creative goal. the thing is, these activities are all still heavily dependent on software someone else designed, and a device that was made in a factory somewhere far away.

piper gives a kid a blueprint, and everything they need to assemble their own very real computer.

no reading is required, as the blueprint takes a page out of lego’s book and includes fully detailed schematic drawings…

…and comes with a screwdriver…

and all the parts you need. based on raspberry pi‘s brilliant technology, indeed, including one of these tiny, yet fully-equipped machines in the piper kit, as well as a power supply, screen, cute red mouse, and tiny green speaker, and various connect-y bits and buttons, piper invites your child to peek inside what’s really going on inside their electronics and learn to expand on them.

that’s the raspberry pi, about the size of his hand. we had a great discussion about why the pi might not be housed inside the box that you build in step one, because that box doesn’t have any air holes. “oh yeah, because electronics probably need air, because of the fire that keeps them going.”

i’m lucky to have grown up beside a computer geek, and my brother has fielded many of my computer questions from afar. moreso than that, what i have learned from him about open source software and about assembling one’s own hardware has really empowered me to tinker and continue on a learning path in what can be to many people an intimidating field. it’s all stuff that can be learned, it just takes a learner who is not fearful of making mistakes. making mistakes (and then fixing them in the next iteration) is what engineering is all about.

after not even 24 hours had passed, quinn’s piper was built, wired and booting up. i witnessed (but did not get on camera) the look of pure wonder and pride when the screen powered on. the screen that he had installed and wired and screwed pieces of wood and hinges onto by his very own self.

upon start up, piper drops you inside a minecraft game that guides you through several levels of tinkering. the premise of the game is that you have to get a disabled, defunct bit of technology (a robot sent into space decades earlier) to work and perform tasks. i think. it’s not like i actually played the game! this was parent hands-off time…

one of the many skills our kids will need in the predicted world of mostly-STEM careers they will inhabit, is the ability to collaborate to solve problems. the day of his birthday party, quinn and his two friends were all over it, pitching in to hold wires together to make the robot go, and troubleshooting and brainstorming out loud for the next step.

there’s also a need for self-reliance. after his buddies left and he lost his crew of people to touch different colored wires together to make his robot go forward and jump, he figured out how to wire up buttons in very short order, to do the same job as his friends had been doing. the goal is to empower kids to believe they can build electronics, that it is a medium in which they, too, can create, and piper achieves this beautifully.

i can’t say enough good about this amazing educational tool. aside from the way piper encourages tinkering and problem-solving in young engineers, it is also a very interesting personality revealer. my boy has a tendency to sometimes think he already has the information, and so he found himself unscrewing and re-assembling parts quite a few times during the process, having jumped the gun before he really knew the plans throroughly. not necessarily a problem, but something to know about oneself. he can also sometimes struggle in dealing with setbacks and frustrations, such as the one time he stormed into the kitchen asking me for a sledgehammer, and it has really been a great teacher for him in so many more ways than just the obvious tech-y ones. he worked through all of those issues and when he was writing a thankful list the other night, his piper made the top ten. it’s clear to me that as he uses it and expands upon it, more opportunities for him to come up with emotionally appropriate responses to real challenges will arise.

because he has, and will continue to, use it extensively. although the piperbot minecraft game launches on startup, you can then plug in a usb keyboard (not included but you have one lying around already, right?) and head over to the main menu of the raspbian operating system and find pre-installed software for accomplishing those aforementioned creative goals: programming, word processing, drawing. minecraft pi is (according to q) almost the same as the standard minecraft he has played with friends, except with more materials in the inventory, and is also included on the software list. but that’s not where it ends… the software is all open source, so quinn, once he learns further programming skills (enabled by programs like scratch and sonic pi, on his piper) will be able to adapt and borrow code and come up with new and fabulous ways of creating with technology that haven’t even been tried yet. you know, like hacking a pottery kiln, or a piano, or (duh) a robot, or, you know, a new pancreas or a wheelchair controlled by eye movement for a friend or family member.

as a side note, i observed on the piper forums (where i went to learn how to get to the main menu via keyboard and troubleshoot the wifi connection issue we were having) how the emotional iq revealing power of piper is not restricted to the children using this tool. parents posting in the forum sometimes displayed an extreme lack of emotional resilience in the face of a challenge, which to me only increases the evidence for the need for this type of learning; the expectation that something will “work” just out of the box without any tinkering necessary, misses the point of this tool entirely, and it’s interesting to see how quickly parents could lose sight of the goals when challenges arise. some could also use some nuance in communicating articulately the exact problem they are facing (“it doesn’t work” is so often not elaborated upon in the forums, it’s kind of creepy! come on, grown ups! represent!) if we want our kids to engage in outside-the-box-thinking, and embrace a platform for creativity rather than consumption, shouldn’t we set an example?

(she typed from her factory-built laptop that booted up windows 8 as soon as she pulled it out of the box… ahem.)

actually, there was even more representation of adults who “get it” in the forums, communicating well and cooperatively helping each other solve the problems their kids couldn’t handle alone, which is yet another reason i think this is a great learning tool that will see continued success. and so without further ado, go forth and geek out!

make like a geek ~ game sliders and creative dice rolling

Posted on January 25, 2016 by marybethrew

a long time ago (2015), in a galaxy far, far away, there was a yoda snowflake.

yes, it all started with a yoda snowflake. that was what possessed me to buy another exact-o knife, even though somewhere in storage, there is already a perfectly serviceable exact-o knife in my possession. even for what could be considered essentials, it is hard to convince me to buy something that i already own a set of in storage. rich had to give me an assignment about long johns one day over christmas break, because thus far into the cold weather months, i had just been carrying on with a single pants layer; the pair of long johns i own are buried deep in a box with all the winter clothes, in a galaxy far, far away, called storage.

unconvinced by my reasoning, he told me i could find time in my busy day to buy myself a pair of long johns. “and get the good ones, not the cheap thin ones.” thank you, honey, for saving me from my frugal self.

i digress. because of storage, and because we had no ornaments, i collected fun free ornament-making ideas earlier in december, and i was excited about star wars snowflakes, and so i overcame my reluctance to buy a tool i already own and got the exact-o knife. i only managed to make the one snowflake, yoda. it was an arduous process, so i laminated that bad boy, and maybe next year i will attempt leia.

meanwhile, my son, game engineer (he named his game engineering firm qaz8quintillion just yesterday; no idea what qaz means, but it sounds like the first syllable in quasi) has taken his game engineering to such a new level that i have started having trouble holding all of the various numbers and quantities and damage points and health points and karma points in my admittedly deficient brain.

game master pajama

another aside: rich laughed and laughed, when my sister-in-law posted a retort about “rew memory” on my bro’s facebook post concerning a time capsule from 22 years ago that he had discovered in the junk drawer. none of us rews could remember anything about it, but apparently he had unearthed it, she said, maybe even within the past year. “good old rew memory” she teased us, for how the same discoveries are novel, over and over again. i think rich felt validated by this aspersion cast upon our collective brains as a family. there are many times he just shakes his head and laughs at my forgetfulness. but, i mean, we’re smart people, everyone forgets things now and then, right?

what was i saying?

oh yeah, so i was trying not to poke my eye out with the pencil while quinn was going back over which ninja weapons each ninja of various expertise could use depending on their belt rank status, and how many times they could attempt to roll the d20 any time they were on the attack, based on which weapon they chose, while i tried not to let static take over my brain as all the rules blurred together on me. (you feel me after reading that run-on sentence, i know you do.) while my son would have been perfectly content to play this game verbally, and hold all the growing and shrinking relevant variables in his considerable noggin, the only things growing and shrinking for me were my dread and my attention span, respectively. i needed a visually appealing, tactile way to keep track of it all.

and then it came to me: sliders.

for every geek attack, there is an equal and opposite geek attack reaction. at least, when i bring my a game to being a mama.

d20, the 20-sided die from d&d, comes in handy for lots of games!

it’s possible, as a mama, to not really actually desire to play ninja wars on graph paper for the entire 72 hours of long weekend, and yet also possible to surrender to the need for connection with my son (who i rarely get to hang out with for 72 consecutive hours anymore), and fully immerse in ninja wars on graph paper for the entire 72 hours. as for me personally, i just needed to put my own spin on it, and get a little crafty so that i could remain awake and static-free.

qaz8quintillion h.q.

i grabbed my exact-o knife, some card stock and a thin sharpie, and started by making a slider for keeping track of my ninja’s health points. (she has princess leia buns: see? my own spin.) something about keeping my hands busy while the game went on… and on… really enhanced my endurance. as usual, this is not a tutorial, i don’t really do tutorials, but i am hoping that the pictures give you a sense of how to make something similar, should the need arise in your household. it’s essentially a piece of paper sliding along another piece of paper, with some way of indicating the value it is keeping track of (in this case, a hole punched in the sliding piece of cardstock).

by the time i finished the first one, i had a sense that we were in this for a very long haul, so then i really let my geek out to run around. we ended up making sliders for keeping track of 4 different ninja’s hp’s, 8 opponents’ hp’s, each ninja and each opponents’ belt rank status, which boss we were fighting, the boss’s hp, karma points, level, and gold coin earnings.

belt color slider; she’s an orange belt!

opponent belt color and hp slider consoles

karma points, level, and gold coin sliders; for some sliding pieces i hole punched and cut 2 slices with the exact-o, and for others like the yin-yang symbol, i taped an additional strip of card stock to the back.

like a boss; a side note: this game is heavily inspired by ninja warz 2, a game i’ve never played and that quinn saw his friend playing online. quinn is not allowed to play this game online, as the site requires an account owner to be age 13 or older. we’re talking a lot these days about ethics and honesty and integrity in online choices.

it wasn’t until after i got fully involved that we worked out some actual rules and ways of making the game really a game that someone could walk up and play, even if they didn’t happen to be quinn. since he had already applied hp as a quantity to determine who would win each battle, we used the multi-sided dice from d & d and came up with a points system, also based on belt status, weapon choice, and so on. ultimately, we spent the whole weekend doing arithmetic and rounding out loud with each other: “14 plus 8, that’s 22, plus 7, that’s 29, plus 6 is 35, now roll the d10 mama, ok plus 4 is 39… that rounds up to 40 damage!”

we get a lot of mileage out of those dice, such as when quinn decided to bust out his oregon trail journal from last year at ols, and begin writing in it again. we made a list of 20 events that could happen on any given day that he has to incorporate into his story writing, just to add that element of chance that one would experience out on the trail. broken axles, backtracking, weather, health, and hunting bison. river crossings aren’t on the list, because he’s actually attempting to write over a realistic number of days, and traveling a realistic number of miles per day while following a map, so rivers will come along in the story according to geography. this is all just part of my plot to help quinn bloom as a writer, of course.

but maybe that’s the subject of another make like a geek moment. until next time… embrace your inner geek!

~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ miracles

Posted on January 16, 2016 by marybethrew

the trouble with blog posts is, there’s no way to make them scratch-and-sniff. perhaps i can utilize some sort of jedi mind trick to make you smell this clove-filled orange while you read about our month of lifelong learning.

rich’s daughter and her fiance came for thanksgiving, and brought quinn a drone. the boys had fun flying it and rescuing it from the hedge with the apple-picker each time it got stuck. these two share a birthday, and i know q looks up to him, i mean, the guy has serious paintball equipment, c’mon. both daughter and son-in-law-to-be are very sweet with quinn.

since our own christmas ornaments were in storage, we decided to make some. then we ended up giving most of them away as gifts, which was a great way to spend less money and avoid giving people things they didn’t want. (because how could they not want a handmade owl from quinn’s pinecone owl colony?) hot glue and some craft foam from the dollar store… and we were cranking out little droid-esque owls in no time. quinn asked me favorite colors of family members he was sending them to, which i thought was very thoughtful of him. he thinks often of his new york family and i know it means a lot to him to do nice things for them and think of them smiling from far away when they opened his gift.

for yet another pinterest project idea we used dollar-store ornaments to make ninja turtles, some to keep, and some to give away to karate instructors and quinn’s third grade teacher, who used to do tae kwon do. quinn did research, and interviewed each instructor to find out their favorite ninja turtle so he could personalize their gifts.

who’s your favorite? q loves rafael, and i am a donatello fan myself.

with clay from our personal ceramics tutor and buddy, quinn worked at sculpting elf, dwarf, wizard, hobbit and ranger mover pieces for his d and d monopoly game.

pokemon card making experienced a surge of renewed interest this month.

the school book fair enchanted quinn, and i remember feeling that way myself when i was a kid, so i gave him some spending money to choose a few (overpriced and of questionable quality, but still) books. i was impressed with his choices: the next installment of diary of a wimpy kid (he had read the whole series up to that point from the library, and was very much looking forward to the next installment), a how-to-draw teenage mutant ninja turtles book (i used to come home from every book fair with a how-to-draw book of some sort), a set of star wars stickers, and a pokemon collector’s handbook. the pokemon handbook induced spin-off activities such as list-making and story writing. pictured above, he is working on quinn’s pokemon story using my laptop.

3 people went to new york for 7 days. they spent 8 hours a day at a hotel. how many hours did they spend at the hotel?

i pondered a bit this month about helping quinn catch his writing skills up to the level of his math and reading skills, but i don’t really think there is much i need to do. he is motivated to write now more than ever, and has lots of ideas: the writing force awakens. his teacher had told me he was less than motivated to write during certain assignments, such as writing his daily “math review” which entails explaining how he solved the math equation. he tends to space out and just not do it, his teacher said, and i nodded knowingly, thinking of how he spaces out and “just doesn’t do” things like getting dressed or putting on shoes. and yet, when it is something that sets him on fire, like making a game or sorting out a new pokemon deck, he has stick-to-it-ive-ness alright, and the space-out symptoms vanish. i liked how he took the make-up-a-problem assignment above and made it into something he cared about – traveling to new york. personalizing mundane assignments is a skill i don’t think i really made conscious use of until graduate school. i think he will learn to tap into that skill for completing assignments that make him want to stick his pencil in his eye, like math review apparently does, and i bet his math reviews will become the most enjoyable read in the stack.

music! quinn still routinely talks about drumming with special interest, when it comes to music, and i do think he is a rhythm-oriented guy, when i see him dance. also, based on the songs he chooses as favorites, i see a definite rhythm-o-phile in the making. he is also playing recorder at school, so we are doing a little at home as well (he said he has his b, a and g figured out). they don’t have music every week- each class has it for a whole week’s specials about twice a semester, but the teacher makes great use of the time, and we’re grateful for the little bit we do get. i have my eye on some star wars recorder music, as well as a cool curriculum for earning karate belts for mastering different songs on recorder that i came across on this mom’s hilarious and well-written blog. stay tuned for me wanting to stick a pencil in my eye as we take this recorder journey together.

speaking of earning karate belts…

a young jedi looks for the good in all people; keeps his karate covered like a treasure in his pocket; and prays he never needs to use it, or for forgiveness if he ever does. love the symbolism and lessons that reach far beyond the mat… karate really is well-rounded, if your kid is going to be a one-extracurricular-activity kind of guy like mine.

testing for his red tip (final step before being eligible to promote to the next belt!)

his belt promotion paperwork. question: how can commitment help you obtain a black belt in karate? answer: commitment is a kind of cowoperation that helps you. question: name two things that you have set goals to do in the past two months. answer: be a green belt by the time i’m 11. be tying bunny loops by the time i’m a purple belt. i will take a small amount of credit for planting that bunny loop idea as a goal, because q had already mastered every other step of getting his karate gear on and off, including tying his belt and folding his uniform after practice, but the ties on the sides of his gi (top) required bunny loops, and he wears crocs on his feet and has never bothered to learn to tie laces. still, in case he wears running shoes ever, it seems like a handy skill to have, and i wanted him to set a deadline so he’d actually work towards it. he decided on purple belt, and then set to work learning bunny loops. and he has indeed learned to tie them, and on the day of his belt test, did not even ask me for help with his gi.

bad picture of bunny loop tying

belt test, the big night. several parents complimented him on how well he did, and his instructor gave him a special shout-out at the end for how hard he had worked to become proficient in his orange belt curriculum. he acknowledged how serious quinn had been in class lately, that his tendency to be a goofball had been less prominent in recent classes, and dubbed him the resident smile-bringer of the dojo.

goofball time is built in, even during belt tests- here the kids are showing off their balance at the very end, wearing their new belts.

smile bringer

now that he is a purple belt, he is in the advanced class, and quinn has been dying to get into that class for one single reason: they get to run for warm-ups! boy after my own heart, with ribs and gangly limbs poking out every which way just like 8 year old me.

we had a fun play date with friends, and got to play with a cool snap-together building toy called lux blox. quinn took his new bunny loop skills on the road and helped with tying his four-year-old buddy’s shoes. (awwwwwww.) we puppy-sat for our ruby again (she was helping him learn more computer programming skills) and also had doggy friends of our housemate to play with this month.

we launched our winter break with a friendly game of uno between the three of us, and ruby helped. my sweet 8 year old boy in a 45 year old’s body (who was 8 when he watched the original star wars on the big screen) took us out on a family date to watch the force awakens. no spoilers here, don’t worry. but oh, the fun! we sure liked it. what i personally liked most were the quirky quinn-isms that were whispered into my ear: “ok mama, the weapon is fully charged. i counted 30 seconds.”

equally as awesome, i walked into his bedroom that afternoon on him trying to use the force. he wasn’t even remotely deterred by my presence, and kept right on trying, commenting on how he was trying to figure out if the force was really real.

i told him i was sure of it.

quintuple sharp tusk; woolly mammoth-inspired pokemon attack powers

while making his dad’s pokemon cards for christmas, we hit a snag because the marker he needed for the background color (“brown sugar” is what he calls it) was drying up, and we didn’t have another one. nor did the store, though they had a close enough for mama color. it was not close enough for quinn. it took him a while, and a lot of trying to get the dried marker to work before he relented, but relent he finally did. then he told me, “it must be a miracle, because my instincts kicked in just in time and i was okay with using the other marker.”

between newfound flexibility and actually finding the christmas tree stand in the storage garage, we most definitely received our quota of christmas miracles.

from the light(hearted) side of the force, always, mb

mb

magic & bioluminescence

Category Archives: handcrafting