Afterthought

Snow ball fights become less fun when your children have gotten older, and therefore are much better at aiming and dodging.

MUCH better.

The aftermath - 26 inches

20" and counting

...and it hasn't let up yet.

Backlogged photos

Last night they opened one of their presents - a black and decker tool set!

Art that the boys made in the brownie-making bowl:

The nature of things

Yikes! (Oh wait - checking - it's the 21st century, so what I meant was - OMG!) It's been awhile since I've posted.

And, likely the number of posts won't increase much over time. Not for a lack of stories - on the contrary, these two five year olds are growing up so quickly that I can hardly keep up. And as they do, the number of stories I can share becomes inversely proportional to it. Their stories are becoming - well, their stories.

This is such an exciting time to be a parent! And I am so thankful every day of the opportunities we have, even though, as with so many people right now, money is extremely tight and with no foreseeable change in sight. But it has opened us up to many things that we may have missed - has led us to the bigger picture - a greater world view.

Since they missed kindergarten by a whole 3 days this past fall, we made the decision to homeschool them this year. Perhaps they will be ready for 1st grade next year, maybe not. Regardless, it has transformed our daily activities and really solidified their passion for learning. Which, to me, is more important that the specific information that they are learning at this age.

Most people would (and probably do) consider us overprotective when it comes to many things: The TV they watch, the games they play (even imaginary ones), the foods they eat, etc. We don't have toy weapons laying around, and even if one gets built out of Tinkertoys, it's not to be pointed at anyone or 'used' in anger. Though most of the time if we ask them what it is, it is some sort of blaster that shoots rainbows or love to everyone. Most importantly - when issues come up, or one of them is angry or impatient at the other - we do a LOT of talking. For two years, when problems have come up, we don't just throw them in time out, we talk about it as well.

And a crazy thing happened somewhere along the way. They started listening. And caring...about each other, about respecting each others choices, about sharing, about being polite. If they start a sentence with "I want....", it's met with a cheery "That's nice!". If they ask for something with "May I have......please", then we gladly get it. If one gets finished eating, he waits patiently until the other is done. So many examples... most we probably started harping on them about way before what is normally done in this day and age.

By far our biggest problems have always been the video games. They, as with most kids, become completely insane with a controller in their hand. But these days, they never make the other one feel bad for losing. In fact, they pay a lot less attention to winning than they used to, in general. They cheer on each other genuinely, they take turns, they don't fight about who gets to be "first player" or who gets to be {insert favorite Mario character of the day}. At first, they just gritted their teeth, knowing that if they started arguing, the game was turned off instantaneously. And at first, when that happened, they threw tantrums and pouted. But now, they get it. In a lot of ways.

We do watch some tv as part of our studies. Zooboomafoo is great for learning about animals. And afterwards, we talk about what they learned, and sometimes head to the internet for more pictures and information. We learn how to spell the words that they are learning during the program, and how to write them. And Imagination Movers always gets them dancing for some fun exercise and problem-solving.

But a lot of what we teach them is real-world things. We let them pick the things they want to learn about. We flip through children's encyclopedias and magazines and talk about the things that interest them. We might stay on a subject for a whole week, as we did with dinosaurs recently - watching shows on the discovery channel and science channel that we'd recorded. It was a great way to introduce things like evolution, and extinction, which led to questions about life in general that were sometimes tricky to answer. For the most part, we don't sugar coat things. If something they asked got them a too-big-to-swallow answer, I've noticed that they will mull over it for a few days before wrapping their heads around it - which always leads to more questions at that point. They are both amazingly intuitive and intelligent - it amazes me more every day.

Brent is my little nature man. When asked what things he was thankful for on Thanksgiving, his list was (in order): Trees, flowers, all the animals, birds, and everything else in the whole world. And he really sees the beauty in things, to where I can almost see his eyes welling up, overwhelmed by emotion at things. He will look over at me, and see the same look in my eye, and for a moment become bashful and nervous. It was his idea to go out and look at the sky every night before bed these days, and he's religious about it. No matter how cold or rainy, he has to go out and check on the moon and stars, noting the changes in them, memorizing which ones are planets, asking questions about the moon phases.

Before bed is when he does his most intense thinking. Many nights I've brought a small dry erase board with me, and we will talk about things while drawing them out, or outlining them. Recently it looked something like this:

Things I'm scared of at night:

1. Bad guys

2. Zombies

3. Witches

4. Ghosts

5. Pirates

6. Spiders

And one by one, we drew pictures and dissected them. We talked about what witches really were (not the goblin-faced ones on Mario). We talked about the things that were real, versus the ones that weren't. We talked about how our eyes played tricks on us in the dark. And we talked about how to manipulate our dreams when faced with a nightmare. It took an hour and a half, and went way past bedtime. But he was listening with everything he had, and absorbing it all with wonder and grace. Since then, bedtimes have gone much smoother. A few more things were added over time, and he often requests to "draw things out" if he has something bothering him.

Anyways, I'm getting carried away by details. The point is - they're both doing great. At even this young age, they are respectful, honest (for the most part!), brave, and not afraid to face their demons. I'm so proud of them :)

On another front, I've become the horrible 'eat your vegetables' mother. Because things are tight, and for other reasons, I've been cooking most of our food from scratch. In the past month, I've baked more bread and used more yeast than I have my whole life (read: ever). I've cut up and used all our pumpkins from halloween. I've used the harvested herbs and spices from our garden and planned out in detail (including having a greenhouse) the crop for next year. Alex, in this last month, has gone from eating mostly chicken nuggets and no vegetables, to requesting peas, stuffing, potatoes. If you lived at our house, your jaw would have dropped at that last piece of information. And, without ever asking them to get involved, they regularly and excitedly help me with all of it, asking tons of questions and learning a lot about health and nutrition in the process.

Of course, the recent weeks have also been about the buildup of Christmas (photos to come!). Decorating our tree is a week long process, and they both know where every special ornament is that they put up. We cleaned up the other room and have a usable fireplace now, so there is a true mantle for the stockings this year. Plus, having decorations in the other room keeps the cats from knocking all the ornaments off and having their way with the garland in the wee hours of the night. As the proud caregiver for two feral-turned-domestic felines, there are many fond moments to be had. But none of them involving Christmas trees.

So, if you made it to end of this rather long post, you will get an explanation of the change in title for this blog. Because the angle has changed, and it's no longer just a story about Brent, but a story about life, about family, and about theories on parenting and relationships. We may not be conventional at most times, but we're very happy. Or maybe it's that blast from the love-ray I got this morning.