Making Acorn Flour

A few days ago, D took the girls on a hike and they gathered acorns. He hasn't had a chance to prepare them yet, so the girls and I did it today. We shelled them, ground them into flour, rinsed it to get all of the tannic acid off, and now the flour is drying. We're going to use it in our pancakes tomorrow. We are all really glad we don't have to prepare them like the Native Americans used to. It's a lot easier with a food processor than it would be with a mortar and pestle! 

Picture from http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Acorn-Flour

 
This led to discussing a lot of different things while we shelled the acorns.  We talked about where our ancestors came from (England, France, Italy, Ireland and many other places), and I showed them on the globe.  We talked about how there were already people living here when our ancestors came.  While discussing how they wouldn't be able to just go to the store to buy food, but that grinding acorns like this would be a matter of either having food or not, we talked about other things they ate, like fish and deer.  E mentioned that sometimes hunting deer is illegal, which led to talking about government, and how there was no government then to say that hunting was illegal.  We talked about what the Native Americans wore, and looked up pictures of their clothes.  Then I told them that we see Native Americans every time we leave the house (there is a Rancheria in our town), and that they don't wear the traditional clothes very often anymore, but dress and look just like us.  

Chess

E, L and I have been playing a lot of chess lately on a windows app.  Then today, this story popped up on facebook, about a teenager in Uganda who has become known as the Queen of Chess.  She started out at 9 years old, walking 2 miles to learn to play chess and get a bowl of porridge.  She became so good that she represented all of Africa in 2010 at an international competition.

It's so cool how something as simple as playing a board game with the kids can lead to finding something inspirational, learning about a different culture, a new place on the map, hearing another language, seeing that not everyone is as privileged as we are.

Plus the learning in the game itself!  This girl says that as she played chess she learned to think ahead, plan her moves in life, and overcome challenges. 

Pencil Sketching

E and L learned some pencil sketching techniques from their great grandma who is visiting my parents this week.  L was especially interested, and they sat together for at least an hour just drawing and talking. They drew lakes, mountains and trees, and they made paper dolls.  L has continued to make more paper dolls at home.

E's waiting for me to get her more paper, not drawing on a book! lol

Their great grandma is an excellent artist, and my parents have several of her paintings hanging up in their living room. She showed us how just recently, she was showing another grandchild how draw rocks in a lake, and when she made a mistake and erased it, a new way to draw rocks dawned on her. She's been drawing for 70 years and she's still learning, not afraid to admit it, and she showed the girls her new technique. That was cool!

Late Nights

E and L could have stayed up all night tonight.  They choose to go to bed at 9:30.

We have never had set bedtimes in our home.  When they are babies, they usually nurse to sleep.  Z still does at nearly 3.  Sometimes in bed, but often on the couch while I watch tv or read or use the computer.  As they have gotten older, we've done a variety of things to encourage sleep.

We've had routines of taking a bath, reading a book and laying down in bed together.
We've let them each pick a tv show, they watch it, and then we lay in bed together.
We've all camped on the living room floor with a movie and slept there for the night.
They've fallen asleep in the living room many times, and we've carried them to bed.
Sometimes we watch a show on the computer in bed, and they fall asleep.
Recently, we've had audio books on the computer in bed.
We've sang them to sleep, rocked them to sleep, scratched and massaged their backs, rubbed their heads or feet, played a relaxing game, and gone on late night drives.
We play all kinds of musical beds with our bed, their bunk bed and the couch.  You never know who's going to be sleeping in which one, with whom, and for how much of the night.

It might sound chaotic, but it works.  It accomplishes the things I believe to be the most important things about sleep.

1) that everyone sleeps as much as their body needs when it needs it.
2) that no one else is kept awake by someone else's lack of sleep late at night.
3) that they kids learn to associate sleep with good and peaceful things.
4) that they learn to recognize their own body's signals that it is tired.

Even though we've never had a set bedtime, we start heading in that direction at a reasonable time.  Reasonable being defined as a time when they are tired, depending on if someone had a nap, depending on what is going on the next day, how much in need of alone time we are, etc.  Heading in that direction being defined as lights off, sound down, snuggling in bed or on the couch, and otherwise creating a sleepy environment.  Usually, they are asleep between 8 and 10.There have been plenty of times where one of the kids has told us they were ready for sleep. 

Recently, E and L have started wanting to stay up "all night until the sun comes up."  They stayed up until midnight or one for about 3 nights, and then D and I said we really needed some alone time.  So we agreed that they could stay up as late as they wanted every Friday night.  That worked until last Saturday, when E started getting really upset that she couldn't stay up late that night too.  I admit I did not handle it so well the first few nights.  I thought our Friday night deal was THE deal and I value the time I get alone with D.  She did go to sleep, but it was not peacefully.

It was Sunday or Monday when she was having a tough time getting to sleep again, and I took a deep breath, reminded myself of my principles and told her we could figure out a solution.  I had no idea what!  All I could think of was that she would stay up late every night, and D and I would NEVER BE ALONE AGAIN.  But I knew that kind of fearful thinking never leads to peace or working together, and we had to think of something.

So I asked her why staying up late was so important to her.  She said that she never gets any time alone.  I said she could go in her room or my room and be alone any time.  She said it's not QUIET.  She liked the peace and quiet and stillness of being up when everyone else was asleep.  

What we came up with was a bit complicated, but she was thrilled.  We decided to trade off every other night.  One night she would go to bed like normal.  The next night, she could stay up and have the living room all to herself for half an hour, while D and I hung out in the bedroom, quietly.  And on Fridays, they could both still stay up as late as they wanted.  To make this happen though, we all needed L and Z to be asleep.  So we agreed that she wouldn't mention it to them, and would pretend to go to bed like normal on her staying up night.  Then once they fell asleep, she could get up.

So we did that for a few nights, and it worked great!  She loved it, and happily came to bed after her half hour and happily went to bed on the nights that D and I stayed up.  Tonight is Friday, so E and L were excited to stay up.  They asked me to play some video games with them, which I did.  Then I said I was going to hang out in the bedroom.  They wanted to come, first just to snuggle.  But on the way down the hall, L said she knew she needed to go to the bathroom before bed.  She wasn't planning on staying up.  As soon as E laid down, she said said she was ready for bed, because she had "stayed up as late as [she] wanted."

That was at 9:30.

It's so true that when they get their needs met, whether it's a need for trying out something new, experimenting with how something makes them feel, or just for peace and quiet, they figure out what works for them, and it all balances out.  

"That's just what boys do when they like you."

A few days ago I talked to the parents (it turned out that they live with their aunt and uncle) of some boys who were being rude and disrespectful to E for the second time this summer. The aunt leans down and says to E in a real syrupy voice, "You know, that's just what boys do when they like you."

I said, "No. My daughter will NOT be learning that it is ok for boys to be disrespectful. If they like her, they should be extra respectful and extra polite."

She says, "Well, she'll just need to learn to have thicker skin if she's going to hang around boys."

My response, "Or you could teach your kids to be more polite."

And people wonder, gee, why on earth do teenager girls stay with boyfriends who are mean to them? Why on earth would a woman stay with a husband who hits her?  Because they've been told since they were little girls that it's OK FOR BOYS WHO LIKE THEM to be rude and disrespectful and put them down and call them names! It's not rocket science, people!  And it's not a huge leap to go from thinking it's ok to be verbally treated like trash, to justifying being physically treated like trash. 

What I didn't even get a chance to talk to this woman about is that the first incident this summer was boys physically blocking E's path and not letting her get home. But she didn't know where any of them lived, so I couldn't do anything (except to give her full permission to deck them in the face or between the legs if they tried that again and let her practice on my hand).

If a grown woman was walking down the street and a group of men was harassing her that way, she could call the cops. But with kids it's ok, because "they must LIKE her."  That mentality is so frustrating!

It is also ironic that the woman said that E just needed thicker skin to play with boys, because two of her favorite play mates all summer have been boys. Even THOSE TWO BOYS won't play with these other boys, because of the way they act.  The two boys who E has been playing with have been kind and polite, and they have spent hours together catching bugs and riding scooters.

My kids fight as siblings will do, verbally and physically, and I totally understand that there are going to be some bumps in the road as kids learn these things with other kids as well. I expect to have to go talk to other parents now and then, and I expect that other parents might have to talk to me occasionally. I just also expect them to use it as an opportunity to dialogue with their kids about what is appropriate and what's not.  I expect them to encourage an apology.

Another weird thing is that first the uncle came to the door, and he sincerely apologized for the way the boys acted.  Then he went inside to get them and the aunt came to the door and said all that, without really having heard what happened. So these kids have an uncle who could be teaching them to be respectful, and an aunt who is undermining that. 

Despite the frustrating outcome of talking to them, it's good that E is seeing how to confront someone who has wronged her.  We were able to talk about setting boundaries with people who have proven themselves to be unsafe.  We talked about how people make mistakes and no one is perfect, but what shows their character is how they react when they are told they have hurt someone.  I asked her later how she felt about me going to talk to them, and she said, "I feel safer because you did that."