Kid Stuff Archives - Page 2 of 7 - The Pencil Princess Workshop

Creative Collective

K is into art, dance, and acting. B is already an accomplished programmer. J gardens and builds things with wood (and sometimes plays around with electricity). They’re all good at what they do and getting better–but they don’t, on the whole, tend to collaborate or even appreciate the others’ skills. I guess I didn’t collaborate much with my siblings when I was their age either.

But I find myself wondering if there’s a project we could do together–one that would use all their skills. Because some of the best times I’ve had with others are those times I’ve worked together to create something. Plays and course outlines–or just supper.

Maybe we should take turns with projects–working on things that will highlight each person’s skills? Does pursuing individual dreams and growing individual gifts have to come at the cost of community?

Hmm. Parenting teens is hard. But not always in the ways I expected.

Boredom

The bane of summer–at least for the kids. Me, I’m plenty busy. I have the garden, and work of varying kinds, and, of course, the kids are home.

But J, B, & K all seem to be plagued by boredom.

Not that they want to do chores.

Or take any classes.

Or read any books.

I’m not sure exactly what they’re hoping for, but I am reminded of “Today is Very Boring” by Jack Prelutsky.

And that always makes me laugh.

Planting Time

Since late February, J has been asking if it’s time to plant vegetables and flowers yet. He wants watermelon and pumpkins and cucumbers and tomatoes and maybe some corn and beans.

The first year J was with us, he didn’t understand when I tried to explain about frost dates and Colorado sometimes getting snowstorms at the end of May (we’ve had at least one after Memorial Day in the past five years.)

He planted things early, and they died young.

This year, though, he listened, and looked at the instructions on the package, and agreed to wait.

And now, it’s time. It will be fun to get all those seeds in the ground.

Spring 2020 Update

My apologies for not posting in a very long time.

It has been a strange spring for us, as it has been for everyone. Completely unprecedented–except not so much in our case.

Some of you may not know, or remember, but my husband and I were in Taiyuan during the SARS epidemic, so this is our second spring of shutdowns, mostly staying at home waiting for a strange new disease to pass, and wondering if are seeing the beginning of the end of the world.

The world managed to keep that genie in the bottle, of course, and after a few months of lockdown, we were able to continue on with fairly normal lives.

This is different, of course. There’s better technology for continuing some semblance of our normal lives (we have online jobs, online school, online church, online critique group). Some things haven’t translated well to online. All our kids miss their school friends. K missed out on playing Ariel in her school’s performance of The Little Mermaid. She also finds some online classes far less than satisfying. (Choir and ballet are the hardest for her to adjust to in the new format.) And she’s heartbroken that she never got to say goodbye to all her friends that will be heading to different high schools than hers next year. B missed the big honors fair that his school does in the spring–and the chance to show off the programming board game he made. J has missed the second half of his lessons with a genuine driving instructor (rather than his parents).

There have been some good things, of course–Times spent together playing cards, baking, gardening, and walking the dog. We’ve enjoyed fairly good health. We still have work. We’ve been in touch with extended family.

These last couple of months have been hard for us, as they have been hard for many, but we have much to be thankful for.

And, as I keep reminding myself, this too will pass.

Spring

I haven’t been posting here in a long time, sorry.

As some of you may know, in December we started a project to expand our house so that each of the kids could have their own room. Much of the new construction is for Mom and Dad, and J is very upset about that, but he’s expressing his frustration by talking through it (sometimes at high volume) rather than resorting to violence, which is a big improvement over last year.

We’re all rather tired of being cramped up in a tiny space all together. Though, of necessity, it has helped us learn to deal with each other a bit more.

J, B, and K are all doing fairly well at school. J continues to enjoy his gym class most, though he recently got to take some Chinese food in for a cultural day in his English class and got quite excited about that. B. continues to immerse himself in the creation of computer games. K had a talent show this week (sang–quite bravely) and continues to take ballet lessons. Her teacher says she can go on pointe after she turns twelve–maybe at the end of the summer.

We continue to struggle to get along many days, but on the whole, we’re in a much better place this time this year than we were at the same time last year.

Friends

For most of the last year, J. has been extraordinarily lonely, hardly connecting with anyone his own age–but recently, a few friends from school have introduced themselves, and he also seems to be getting along better with B. and K. (Not all the time, and he doesn’t often get along with them both at the same time, but they’re often watching movies, playing computer games, trying out catch, or playing hide-and-seek.) All this seems to make J. a bit happier with his life.

B. seems to be making some new friends as well–he’s found a couple of kindred spirits at the middle school, and though that doesn’t entirely make up for not seeing his old friends as much as he’d like to, it’s making his transition to the new environment go about as well as it possibly could. There are rough spots, but it is middle school, after all.

K.’s new friends moved right into the neighborhood. They’re from a wonderful family a couple of houses down from ours, and though the kids are a bit younger than K., they all seem to get along. In fact, it may even be good that they’re younger–a lot of K.’s same-age friends are beginning the craziness of the preteen/teen years, and occasionally it’s nice for K. to get away from that drama. Maybe when her new friends enter it, K. will be far enough in that she’ll be able to be the stabilizing influence. We can hope.

Backyard Shed

We’ve been planning to put up a shed in the backyard for a couple of years now–more as a sort of playhouse than anything else, but we also plan to use it to store bicycles.

We finally got our shed (in a giant kit) about a month ago, and bit by bit, we’ve been putting it up. J. has helped with almost every step of the process, but B. & K. have also done a fair amount of the work. We got the roof shingled just in time for it to snow last Monday.

It has been fun to work together and has helped our relationships to have a common goal. We have the last bit of painting to do (as soon as we get a day that’s warm enough with little wind–and there are adults around to supervise). Then we may need to think of a new family project. Because working together seems to be good for us.

Six Weeks of School Already

I can’t quite believe it either. Where has all the time gone?I have only one elementary school student these days. K enjoys walking to and from the school, sometimes with our new neighbors, and she seems to enjoy school. K recently helped me a bit with my latest novel–reading and giving comments. She was very encouraging. And I also loved it when she said, “Anya hates math? How can anybody hate math?”

B seems to be enjoying his first year in middle school. He’s making a few new friends and has joined a puzzle-game club. (He was invited after designing a digital Rubik’s Cube.) On the whole, the transition has gone better than he feared it would. Hopefully that will continue.

J is handling school reasonably well, also. At last count, he had thirty-two of the pride tickets they give kids for working hard, being respectful and helping others at school. He’s also been doing a lot of work at home to help us put up a bike shed/playhouse in our back yard. (The other kids have helped some, too, but J has been out there as often as it’s not raining, working hard.)

So, all in all, we’re doing pretty well. In fact, we’re worlds away from where we were this time last year. It’s refreshing. (Or would be if we didn’t have such a long ways to go yet.)

One Year

It has been a year since we first brought J. into the US. Quite the year. I think we’re all feeling a bit exhausted, but it’s also easy to see that we’ve come a long way. Sometimes it even seems like J. is happy to be with us.

We haven’t had any pictures in awhile, so here’s a few from recent months.

From the Spring

From our trip to pick B & K up from their grandparents:

From our 4th of July Camping Trip

As you can see, we’ve been managing to have some fun as a family. There are still plenty of tense, angry moments in our home, but we’ve had some good times, too.

Together Again

For the past two-and-a-half weeks, B & K have been visiting family while J and we parents have been home dealing with the unusually warm Denver June. On the home front we’ve had some not fun business (court; trips to the dentist) and some more fun stuff (skating at Skate City; a trip to Garden of the Gods and to check out Aunt Abby’s quilts in her quilt guild’s show in Monument), but mostly J has been lonely. He looked almost as glad to see K yesterday as I was, (and he seemed even a little glad to see B). I don’t know that he’d say the driving was worth it, but maybe he would.

We’re back to driving tomorrow, but yesterday the kids had a blast in the hotel pool, and today we’re going to rent paddle-boats or canoes and get out on a lake with Grandma & Grandpa. Should be fun, we think. It sounds like B & K had a very good time visiting grandparents and cousins. The break from the stress at our house seems to have also been good for them. But they were very, very glad to see us, and I think they’ll be glad to get home.

So road trip this week for the Hoffs. And then K’s birthday. Life is good.