The not-so-good ones end with frozen yogurt with lots of toppings. Luckily, we did our first family ride close to home, so when Dwayne’s chain snapped, it wasn’t the big deal it would be if we hadn’t been a short bike ride from our car and bike shop.
But it’s still worth a “Cheers!” with the family.
First of all, isn’t this the coolest cloud formation you have seen? Seriously, Double Bluff beach is a kick, which is why we log in so many hours there.
Kyla, Piper, Wesley, Friend, Friend, and Friend spent 3-4 hours Tuesday afternoon building a teepee out of driftwood, and used kelp to decorate it.
Today we went back so the kids could continue working on their fort and then they “had to” build a bridge, with more wood, sand, shells, and rocks.
Everyone, except Mama, who had books to read, helped.
I love how the girls collected seaweed to make the teepee walls waterproof (and on sunny days, it works great!).
And after all that play, Wesley is exhausted and wants to sleep NOW!
Hi, Moms,
You know some of those handy kid snacks that are so convenient, healthy-ish, and completely disposable? I’ve stopped getting them in my attempt to go Zero Waste (impossible right now, but I like being very conscious of what I put in landfill). BUT, we discovered that Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle has a program to recycle Go-Go’s (the applesauce squeeze tubes), Capri-Suns, plastic lids (the ones too small for household recycle like milk jug lids), corks, and batteries. Oh, and those plastic rings that hold 6-packs together. When you turn them into the Zoomazium or the special cart by the new Asian otter exhibit for points. Then, kids can spend their points on—get this—really cool shells and real fossils! Seriously, can life get better for K & P??
Kids can also get points for stopping by the Zoomazium and picking up activities to do at the zoo that day, like observing the different babies behaviors, or Behavior Bingo, etc. Anyway, we have more reason than usual for going to the zoo.
This is the sign at the Northern Tree Shrew exhibit:
See, and it turned out okay. Probably.
We’ll have to come up with a name for this beast, since we bought the naming rights from our neighbor who has been the reluctant owner of this ‘73 Dodge for a few years. We’ve borrowed it more than we should have, and it finally kicked the bucket while Dwayne was coming home with a load of lumber. After spending $700 to fix it—fuel filter, ignition coil, master cylinder, and brakes (because if it was eventually going to start, we needed it to stop)—we figured we needed to buy it so it wouldn’t be sold to someone else.
So the good news is that you now know someone who owns a truck and a cabin. We need to know someone with a boat and a hot tub.
Speaking of the cabin, I’ve finished (read: I’ve done all I’m going to until next winter) a website for the cabin.
http://heartseaselogcabin.blogspot.com/
What I like best is that it has a calendar of times already reserved so you can see when it may be available. The times we are going are not usually marked.
Although I am fascinated by the idea and have been reading about the subject for years, I still don’t understand what Zen is. For now, let’s oversimplify and agree that Zen is a perfect peace derived from the transcendence of human suffering through mediation. Imagine the smiling Buddha, the one who holds the secret to life: he is enlightened, beyond desire, beyond frustration, beyond suffering. Zen. If there is one word that represents the opposite of how I experience life, it’s Zen.
An excerpt from my current favorite book, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on life unarmed, by Glennon Doyle Melton. (Mom, you will love this book. I read chapters aloud to Kyla daily and after giving me a thoughtful synopsis of the chapter, she pleads for another one.)
* * * * * *
We went up to Deception Pass today. Wesley and Kyla “cliff-climbed” over to a little beach isolated by high tide. I stayed with them and, picking up a cue from the person who had been in this little corner last, started building little stone towers. I mentally dubbed it “my Zen”.
True to his calling, Wesley ran up and joyously kicked my Zen down.
Downed Zen.
Luckily, life has opportunities for more Zen. And destroying any notion of true Zen, my Zen kicked Dwayne’s Zen’s butt.
It’s hard to find a more beautiful place than Deception Pass.
Besides building our Zen towers, the kids explored the properties of fulcrums and levers. They called it playing on a teeter-totter. Tomato, tomahto.
We took a special trip a favorite Brasilian restaurant in Seattle (on the Ave, just before the Ravenna junction). We dressed up “special” for the occasion (Wesley with a red tie, red T-shirt, and pink sateen skirt, Piper wore one of Wesley’s ties with her dress).
This boy conked almost as soon as we backed out of the driveway.
One thing we are celebrating is that Grandpa and Grandma have left Brasil for good and are back stateside!
Grandpa and Wesley share common interests.
And if you ever find yourself on that end of the Ave, stop in and try the passion fruit mousse…I will be dreaming about it for months!
…when I went into her room and discovered she had used scissors to cut a hole in her window screen, large enough to put her hand through and touch the roof. Of course, it’s never an isolated incident—Wesley had cut up the dust cover on a library book so that he could see the picture it had covered, Piper had gotten out my Russian nesting dolls and then stepped on one—the destruction seems ongoing. And I was So. Mad. At. Kyla. Had she been there, the following would have happened to her:
But as mentioned before, Kyla was at school—her last day—and I had to cool my heels for a few hours. I had to go clean something.
I went out to our street with the blower and broom and cleaned our end of the street and a vacationing neighbor’s driveway. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned (with Piper and Wesley’s help, because heaven forbid would they let me be when they have 3 other adults to be with) and thought and stewed and fumed. And I finally came up with a consequence that was practical, cost-efficient, timely, and hopefully, educational.
Dwayne bought “screen by the foot” at the hardware store when he went, and I threaded a needle, and after lunch, I taught Kyla how to sew and she repaired the screen. It took her some time, and she couldn’t use big stitches, and I received a sincere apology. And she will have a patched screen for the rest of her childhood to remind her of impulsive actions and consequences.
I think all my children will do well to be out of my reach for two hours upon committing (or have been discovered to commit) a particularly destructive crime.
I just realized that I usually “Mom” (or “MOM!”) these days, instead of “Mama” (or MaaaaaaaaMMMMMAAAAA!). I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.
I love that Piper wore the “new” dinosaur costume all day long, including riding her bike to school to pick up Kyla. She managed to keep her tail in line! (Thanks, Sus!) Kyla, sadly, was prevented by her mother in wearing her outfit for her last day of school.
Wesley appears to be napping or tantrumming on the floor behind Kyla.
As always, I congratulate myself for marrying Mr. Fantastic.
Dwayne eventually wants to spend Fathers Day doing amazing family adventures, such as white water rafting. But we’ve got three years before we can do that, so we substituted an all family day at Snoqualmie Railways.
But first we had to climb a tree.
Kyla: Mama! I can’t get up! I need help!
Piper: I’ll give you a boost up, Kyla!
Now we are waiting for the train by walking the tracks.
Dwayne’s parents are in town, so we got to celebrate Dwayne’s dad, my dad, and Dwayne himself. With some non-dads thrown in, we had a splendid day.
The best part about the Snoqualmie-North Bend train was the trip to to Snoqualmie Falls—I’ve never seen the falls from that side. It was gorgeous!
Back on the other side, after an authentic Italian meal, we visited the falls, and instead of enjoying the view, we played freeze tag with another family.
It’s the beginning of Week 25 of 2013, and I’m on track for a book a week this year (#1 on the list took me weeks to finish!)
24. All Over the Map, by Laura Frasier. Excellently titled, this travel writer’s memoir is the story of a middle-aged single woman who loves her exotic, adventurous life while she longs for love and children. She envies her married, child-ful friends almost as much as they envy her. But her journeys go deeper than simply Samoa and blind dates—she is a living, breathing, interesting person who hits hers 47th birthday as she completes this book. Worth the read.
23. Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg. I ran out of sticky arrows to mark important passages in this important manifesto. Very readable, but more importantly, more “thinkable”. I wish she had written this ten years ago; my history would probably be different. But I’m willing to bet Mrs. Sandberg will be influencing my future. More importantly, I hope I will be influencing my future. For those who want the short version, click here. It’s a verbatim list of passages I marked.
22. Parenting a struggling reader by Susan Hall & Louisa Moats. Good information for those who might be the parent described in the title. A decent handbook to get you started.
20. Teaching on Poverty Rock / Joby McGowan. It’s not his first year teaching, but it’s his first year teaching on Mercer Island. A very short memoir.
19. To Sell is Human: the surprising truth about moving others / Daniel Pink. I read Drive, a book on what motivates us, last year. He’s a writer like Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell, great at taking diverse studies and bringing interesting information into a cohesive framework. He’s just a fun read! And we all so spend a lot of time “selling”—what to put in a subject line so you will read—and respond—to my email, advertising old stuff on craigslist, convincing someone else to do a job so you don’t have to…
18. How Children Succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character, by Paul Tough (author of Whatever It Takes). LOVED this. I posted more in depth on some of the ideas that stood out in this book.
17. Giving Our Children a Fighting Chance: Poverty, literacy, and the development of information capital / Susan B. Neuman, Donna C. Celano. This is the perfect book for me—the tale of two libraries, it deals with literacy, learning, poverty, the achievement gap, technology and education all within the parameters of an empirical research paper published as a book. (Those who listen to NPR will recognize the Susan B. Neuman name.) In case you find this as interesting as I do, you are in luck! KCLS didn’t have this book until I requested it and it looks like I will have to buy the book as it has some water damage. Hmm.
16. The Introvert Advantage: How to thrive in an extrovert world / Marti Olsen Laney. I am interesting in this topic, as I consider myself quite introverted (social, but introverted) and at least one of my kids has my same introvert characteristics. Recently, I went to a very engaging Susan Cain lecture about introverted children. Her book, Quiet, is on my hold list at the library and I think I will find it more interesting than this one.
15. Gilead / Marilynne Robinson. We read it for book club. It was excellently written, and it was hard to believe the nearly 80 year old pastor narrator was written by a middle age woman. It was pretty good.
1. What to Do When Your Temper Flares: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Problems With Anger
2. What to Do When You Dread Your Bed: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Problems with Sleep
3. What to Do When Bad Habits Take Hold: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Nail Biting and More
4. Sometimes I Worry Too Much, But Now I Know How to Stop
5. What to Do When You Grumble Too Much: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Negativity
6. What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Anxiety
11. Fluency instruction: research-based best practices / edited by Timothy Rasinski, Camille Blachowicz, Kristin Lems. (2006). Great articles about, well, fluency. Quickest summary: kids learning to read fluently should read the same thing 4 times.
9. Becoming a Thinking Christian: If We Want Church Renewal, We Will Have to Renew Thinking in the Church / John B. Cobb, Jr. From the publisher, “This book challenges Christians to think. Committed lay Christians, says Cobb, are already theologians; he wants them to realize this and then to become good theologians. Laypersons are just as capable as professional theologians of intellectual hard work, but they no longer expect the church to ask this of them. Cobb discusses why it is important for Christians to think about their own beliefs and assumptions.”
[Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. This is supposed to be an excellent book. I picked it up and started reading it at the library while Wesley slept in my arms. I had a few concerns about the subject matter, so I read the ending, decided I would hate the novel, no matter how well-written, and put it in the return box on the way out.]
8. Speaking Among the Bones (A Flavia de Luce novel) / Alan Bradley. This is the 5th in a series that I am on the library hold lists long before the book is published. A day’s read if one ignores one’s duties enough. I adore Flavia, who is now almost twelve. The last sentence in the book is the best/worst I’ve read in a mystery. Unfortunately for my sanity, the sixth book isn’t scheduled to publish until “early 2014”. You’re killing me, Alan Bradley.
7. Radical: Fighting to put students first / Michelle Rhee. I read a book about Ms. Rhee last autumn and got a lot out of it, including a radical crush on Michelle and her philosophies. I bought Radical when I went to see her last week at a Town Hall lecture (thank you, Seattle Public Library!). There were pickets and protests and hisses and everything. Since leaving the Washington, D.C. district, she has started StudentsFirst, a union of sorts for students. She’s considered controversial, but I support her positions. I definitely want to teach again when the kids are all in school, but she inspires me to move to the inner city and work harder than I ever have in my life to be the best teacher any kid has ever had. I’ve already said it: she’s inspiring.
6. All There Is: Love stories from StoryCorp / Dave Isay (editor). I put this on my Hold list when I got on my This I Believe essay kick last year, one of NPR’s great features. Forty minute interviews between lovers, friends, and family are written up in short essays. It’s an excellent peek into the love lives of representative slice of America.
5. American Dervish / Ayad Akhtar. We picked this novel for book club and I loved it. I learned more about Islam, Jewish-Muslim-Christian tensions, and the Koran through this piece of fiction than I’ve ever gotten out of a deliberate study. Ah, the power of story. It brings up some great discussion topics, not only for book club, but even for Dwayne and me. Unfortunately, this is the author’s first book so as much as I would like to grab from the shelves all his other brilliance, I will have to wait.
4. Blueprints for building better girls / Elissa Schappell. Meh. A collection of short stories that I didn’t realize were about the same women until nearly the end. If you decide to read this book about anorexic girls with more issues than food, know that Elizabeth, Bender, and B are the same person. Maybe now you will get more out of this than I did.
3. The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron. Another audio read, I found this is the section of previous Newberry winners. Lucky, a ten year old orphan, is trying to find her Higher Power, a concept she has heard about while eavesdropping on the different “Anonymous” meetings her in small, small town. Hey, it won a prestigious award—always worth reading.
2. Predictably Irrational: the hidden forces that shape our decisions, by Dan Ariely. This was an audio read for me and both the reader and subject were fascinating. It’s in the same genre as Freakomics or anything by Malcolm Gladwell.
1. World without End, by Ken Follett. Our book group read Follett’s Pillars of the Earth a few years ago and decided to tackle the sequel, giving ourselves December and January. It’s 1,050 pages about life in a English town and priory in the 14th century. I love his historical fiction—I can read a history book about Martin Luther’s protests of certain Church practices, but fiction makes the fact more real. The author uses a few prototype characters no matter what century he’s writing in, but overall, I’d say my enjoyment of the novel was just about worth the 4-5 other books I gave up reading to get through this one.
[Red denotes a work of nonfiction.]
Wesley is just about the age Kyla was when he was born. Less than 3.5 years ago, Kyla was the eldest of three small children, four months after her third birthday. But here’s the baby, who is being a fierce knight who only slightly resembles a turtle (shield on back).
Then:
And now (Cousin Parker is the extra kid—I’m holding steady at three of my own):
Again, here’s my shortcut version of the book, but really, this is one of those books that I read for my kids (like I read Lean In for me).
* * * * * * *
Big Idea: A study took kids who scored low on an IQ test retested those kids and gave them an M&M for every correct answer. They went from an average IQ of 79 to an average of 97.
So…what is their “real” IQ, 79 or 97? (It turns out that life prospects were more in line with a 79 score.) “They may have been low in IQ, but they were low in whatever makes a person try hard on an IQ test without any obvious incentives” (pg. 69).
In other words:
IQ = Natural/developed intelligence/ability + amount of innate motivation
Self-control as a child is correlated with, as an adult, being less likely to smoke, have health problems, have bad credit, brushes with the law, have multiple addictions, and raising children in a single-parent household (p. 73-74).
However, self-control isn’t quite the “driver of success that [Duckworth] was looking for” (p. 74). She called “a passionate commitment to a single mission and an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission” (p. 74), or grit, the important quality that could make the difference in succeeding (my note: compare word choice with success).
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/grit/angela-duckworth-grit.html
Denise: Your grit score is: 4.5. You are in the 90th-99th percentile of other users who have taken this test.
How to improve your grit:
Three strategies people use when setting goals:
1) Optimism: envisioning all the good things that will happen when you achieve; indulging; “doesn’t usually correlate with actual achievement” (p 92)
2) Pessimism: “dwelling, thinking about the entire thing that will get in the way of their accomplishing their goals” (p 92). Doesn’t work well, either.
3) Mental contrasting: “contrasting on a positive outcome and simultaneously concentrating on the obstacles in the way. Doing both at the same time… ‘creates a strong association between future and reality that signals the need to overcome the obstacles in order to attain the desired future’” (p 93). Set rules for yourself.
If you don’t have that kind of safety net (middle class, affluent)—and children in low-income families almost by definition do not—you need to compensate in another way. To succeed, you need more grit, more social intelligence, more self-control than wealthier kids. P 103
Pp120-1 Researchers have demonstrated that for infants to develop qualities like perseverance and focus, they need a high level of warmth and nurturance from their caregivers. ….[W]hen children reach early adolescence, what motivates them most effectively isn’t licking and grooming-style care but a very different kind of attention. Perhaps what pushes middle-school students to concentrate and practice … is the unexpected experience of someone taking them seriously, believing in their abilities, and challenging them to improve themselves.
When [Tom Brunzell’s] students were flailing, lost in moments of stress and emotional turmoil, he would encourage them to do the kind of big-picture that take place in the prefrontal cortex: slowing down, examining their impulses, and considering more productive solutions to their problems [than yelling, hitting].
Pg 152-3 The SAT (and the ACT) were designed to equalize the differences in schools (eg a 3.5 GPA in different high school across the nation). But ACT and SAT scores were poor predictors of college completion. The better predictor, actually, is high school GPA. “It was true that a student with a 3.5 GPA from a high quality HS was somewhat more likely to graduate from college than a student with a 3.5 GPA from a low-quality HS, but the difference was surprisingly modest.”
Conclusion: “whether or not en is able to graduate from a decent American college doesn’t necessarily have all that much to do with how smart he or she is. It has to do, instead, with the same list of character strengths that produce high GPAs in the middle and high schools…motivation, perseverance, good study habits and time management skills”
OneGoal Leadership principles: Resourcefulness, resilience, ambition, professionalism, and integrity.
I just finished the latest feminist manifesto. The level of importance I ascribe to a book is perfectly proportional to the number of sticky-arrows used to mark up the reading. I ran out of the markers three-quarters the way through.
A good friend made an excellent point that boys are statistically in more trouble than girls up through college graduation, when women earn 50-65% of the college degrees (depends upon the study you read). However, if women are so much more educated, why are there only 21 female Fortune 500 CEOs? Honestly, I read this for me, not for my kids. (I read enough stuff for them!)
Here’s the notes that I highlighted from Lean In; they are all verbatum except for one obvious Denise interruption.
* * * * * * * *
1. Knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make things better.p 5
2. While women continue to outpace men in educational achievement, we have ceased making real progress at the top of any industry. This means that when it comes time to make decisions that most affect our world, women’s voices are not heard equally. p 5-6
3. In addition to the external barriers erected by society, women are hindered by barriers that exist within ourselves. We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. …We compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet. p. 8
4. If we want a word with greater equality, we need to acknowledge that women are less likely to keep their hands up. We need institutions and individuals to notice and correct for this behavior by encouraging, promoting and championing more women. And women have to learn to keep their hands up, because when they lower them, even managers with the best intentions might not notice. P 36
5. There is little downside when men negotiate for themselves. People expect men to advocate on their own behalf, point out their contributions, and be recognized and rewarded for them. But since women are expected to be concerned with others, when they advocate for themselves or point to their own value, both men and women react unfavorably. Interestingly, women can negotiate as well as or even more successfully than men when negotiating for others because in these cases, their advocacy does not make them appear self-serving. P 45
6. When negotiating, “Think personally, act communally.” …preface negotiations by explaining that they know that women often get paid less than men so they are going to negotiate rather than accept the original offer. Pronouns matter. P 47
7. Until we can get there, I fear that women will continue to sacrifice being liked for being successful. p49
8. “I want to apply to work with you at Facebook,” she said. “So I thought about calling you and telling you all the things I’m good at and all the things I like to do. Then I figured that everyone was doing that. So instead, I want to ask you: What is your biggest problem, and how can I solve it?” P 53
9. “Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.” p 54
10. “Tiara Syndrome” where “women expect that if they keep doing their job well someone will notice them and place a tiara on their head.” (Anyway, who wears a tiara on a jungle gym?)p 63
11. Alice Walker: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” p 63
12. By the time the baby arrives, the woman is likely to be in a drastically different place in her career than she would have been had she not leaned back…. By not finding her ways to stretch herself in the years leading up to the motherhood, she has fallen behind. When she returns to the workplace after her child is born, she is likely to feel less fulfilled, underutilized, or unappreciated. …She probably scales her ambitions back even further since she no longer believe that she can get to the top. And if she had the financial resources to leave her job, she is more likely to do so. p 94
13. When husbands work fifty or more hours per week, wives with children are 44% more likely to quit their jobs than wives with children whose husbands work less. p 99
14. Imagine that a career is like a marathon—a long, grueling and ultimately rewarding endeavor. Now imagine a marathon where both men and women arrive at the starting line equally fit and trained. The gun goes off. The men and women run side by side. The male marathoners are routinely cheered on. “Looking strong! On your way!” But the female runners hear a different message. “You know you don’t have to do this!” the crowd shouts. Or “Good start—but you probably won’t want to finish.” The further the marathoners run, the louder the cries grow for the men: “Keep going! You’ve got this!” But the women hear more and more doubts about their efforts. …. “Why are you running when your children need you at home?” p 100-101
15. Gloria Steinman: We know now that women can do what men can do, but we don’t know that men can do what women can do.” 120
16. DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT. P 125
17. Study after study suggests that the pressure society places on women to stay home and do “what’s best for the child” is based on emotion, not evidence. p135
18. Guilt management can be just as important as time management for mothers. 137 (NOTE TO SELF: eradicate “bad mom” from all of my conversations, internal and otherwise.)
19. The New “F-word” (Marianne Cooper)—feminism (P 142)
20. A definition of leadership: Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” 157
21. The more women can stick up for each other, the better… Everyone loves a fight, and they really love a catfight. 162
22. Any coalition of support must also include men, many whom care about gender inequality as much as women do. In 2012, Kunal Modi wrote an article “Man UP on Family and workplace Issues.” He argued that “for the sake of American corporate performance and shareholder returns, men must play an active role in ensuring that the most talents young workers (often women…) are being encouraged to advocate for their career advancement….So men, let’s get involved now==and not in a patronizing manner that that marginalized this as some altruistic act on behalf of our mothers, wives, and daughters, but on behalf of ourselves, our companies, and the future of our country. 165-6
23. Because feminism wasn’t supposed to make us feel guilty, or prod us into constant competitions….. It was supposed to make us free—to give us not only the choices but the ability to make those choices without constantly feeling that we’d somehow gotten it wrong. 167
24. Susan B. Anthony: Our job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make them ungrateful so they keep going.” We need to be grateful for what we have but dissatisfied with the status quo. This dissatisfaction spurs the charge for change. 172
Climbing!
Scaling!
Zipping!
Swinging!
Gliding!
But eventually, it’s not just going to be my kids who are so wild. We go visit the lion cubs.
Drat, I didn’t really get any good shots. But take a close look at this.
Earlier, there had been 6 ducklings. If you can see the one are the far right, there are now just three. At least one of them is being played with by the cubs. It’s fully dead but not as mangled as you’d think.
Mama Lion had been catching ducklings for her cubs to play with. Or eat. And eat? Hmm. It was very fascinating and Kyla was really excited to tell me all about food chains. Mama Lion is clearly on top.
And because I had to stop by the membership counter to renew our card, I bought the carousel punch card. A special treat cheaper than a café snack with no unwanted sugars.
We’ll go back lots this summer!
