While cleaning out the downstairs office (ie. the homeschool room to be), I came across my long lost point and shoot camera. I nearly forgot I had the darned thing because it fell into disuse after I got my smartphone! Since TLE’s taken mostly good care of the first gen Kindle Fire I entrusted to her after I bought my iPad, I didn’t think too much of entrusting her with the camera as well.

So what happens when you give a kid a camera?

She’ll take pictures of her favorite things with it.

And then when you go out to eat with friends, she’ll want to take her camera along, too.

“Mommy, look! I’m taking pictures of my food!” (Future Asian food blogger?! I’m so froud.)

And after she takes pictures of food, she’ll take pictures of our friends…

And after she takes pictures of our friends, she’ll take pictures of herself…

And when she takes pictures of herself…

eventually…

… she’ll make Duck Lips ™

And when your five year old daughter makes Duck Lips…

Mommy dies a little inside. Because OMFG how have I gone so wrong that my daughter does the dreaded Duck Lips?! I always assumed that Duck Lips were the social networking disease of the wannabe popular girls on MySpace — of which I certainly AM NOT ONE.

Then Mommy threatens to take away the camera and/or ban selfies until she agrees that Duck Lips Are Bad ™.

( … at least until she learns that cameras are  only given to little girls who agree that Duck Lips look ridiculous.   *shudder*)

When preparing for TLE’s birthday party, I fielded the normal questions on what she wanted for her birthday. Ever since watching an episode of Sid the Science Kid back in October that featured the idea of recycling things, TLE has routinely used her imagination and whatever she’s found around the house to create new toys. Boxes, tape, doodads and whatsits that would normally end up in the trash have routinely become space ships and cars, robots and giraffes and everything in between in TLE’s hands.

Ready made toys (with the exceptions of My Little Pony and maybe a few superheroes, which she always loves) were out — crafts and anything building related were in. I drew up an Amazon gift list that included some of her favorite building toys, books and craft supplies which she got in great abundance and has been having fun with ever since. (She even got some new favorites like Crystal Climbers! What a fun and pretty building toy!)

My friends Kung Fu Guy ™ and Karate Gal ™ took the build-your-own toy concept one step further. Their present to her included a stuff-your-own stuffed toy kit, story cubes, a rainbow nightlight as well as a few other surprises.

“Is that a tool kit??” asked our roommate Rainbow Dash.

“Kung Fu Guy ™ bought it for her.” I explained.

“Oh!” Rainbow Dash nodded. “Well, that makes sense.” (These are the kinds of friends we have. We  love them.)

As Kung Fu Guy ™ explained, he and Karate Gal ™ believed it was high time that TLE learn to use real tools. We are totally behind because… dude, tools! Perfect for a budding mini-Maker like TLE. I remember how much fun I had as a kid, taking things apart to see how they worked. At least now she doesn’t have to steal my tools the way I stole my dad’s

Once all her presents were opened, Karate Gal ™ gave TLE and the other kids a lesson in using the tool kit. And later, when I finally found AAA batteries for her new rainbow nightlight, TLE showed me that she was able to unscrew the battery plate and put the batteries in all by herself.

Pretty cool for five years old! How’s that for Miss Independent?!

I can’t wait until she takes apart computers by herself!! <3 <3

… whoa, waitasec O_O;

Since TLE’s preschool was out for the week for Spring Break, I thought I’d take advantage of the time at home to do a little test run of our future homeschool. In preparation, I flipped through the copy of Five in A Row that I’d ordered from the library, complete with several books. I had it all planned out with a nice — but still flexible — schedule for the week. We’d start our day off with a story and activity from Five in A Row, do some work on ABC Mouse, some iPad apps, some reading work with our BOB books and still have plenty of time to play.

I had it all planned out. I was quite proud of myself.

I’ll give you three guesses as to how the test run went and the first two don’t count.

I asked the more experienced homeschool parents on the Secular Homeschool Forums for some advice. Everyone suggested just taking it easy.  There was one comment that really stuck out in my mind:

I have to say that I am always a little surprised when people try to do a test run of homeschooling during a break. If you had to do a test run of a different job during your vacation, it might not go so well for you either.

With that in mind, I threw out the plan. I eased off and chose to spend the remainder of the week going to playdates,  reading,  and fit in a visit to the local wildlife museum which was a real hit.

She was especially interested in the live raptor demonstration.

And she loved “soaring” high above the Northern California hills with an eagle’s eye view.

Not shown: TLE petting a snake, looking at fossils and a ton of other activities she just adored.

Take away for the week: sometimes the best “plan” is to throw the one you have out the window.

WARNING: Time for a rant! Also: not my baby

source: FreeDigitalPhoto.net

We’ve always embraced attachment parenting (AP) principles. Frankly, if it weren’t for the AP pillars of co-sleeping, babywearing and extended breastfeeding, I would have lost my marbles a long time ago. (Arguably, I never had them to begin with, but whatever.)

And while I’m more than happy to talk about AP ad naseum online, in real life, I tend to keep my opinions on parenting to myself. No matter how much I believe in AP as the right choice for our family, the truth is that it’s not for everyone. AP is very intensive; critics would argue too intensive. If you’re in a partnership, that relationship is forever changed and frankly, I don’t think all partnered parents can handle the fundamental shifts that AP demands.  I’ll go so far as to say that a parent does sacrifice a lot of their individuality to embrace attachment parenting principles. But for those of us who abide by such principles, the deep bonds of trust you forge with your children are well the sacrifice.

Also, I make for a horrible attachment parenting advocate.  I am constantly having to field the misunderstandings of what AP is and isn’t. (Damn you TIME for the misleading cover!)  I wholly believe in AP’s principles:

The essence of Attachment Parenting is about forming and nurturing strong connections between parents and their children. Attachment Parenting challenges us as parents to treat our children with kindness, respect and dignity, and to model in our interactions with them the way we’d like them to interact with others.

[ via API ]

Unfortuantely, AP’s often misconstrued as a form of helicopter parenting, indulgent and too child centered. (I’m still trying to figure out how you can be “too” child centered as a parent but I digress.)

Far from being the mature, well-spoken spokesparent that I think AP deserves — and ignoring the fact that AP is about removing violence – my natural inclination is to settle the aforementioned misunderstandings with a brick to the head.

I am a HORRIBLE attachment parenting advocate.

Case in point: Today, I was at the local elementary school, dropping TLE off for her weekly speech therapy session. While I was there, I happened upon two ladies, an older lady of grandmother-ish age and a young mom with a baby in a stroller, presumably there to pick up one or more of her older children. The two ladies obviously knew each other and the younger one asked about the older lady’s grandbaby.

The older lady went on to describe how her son picks up his infant whenever he cries. “Oh god, he’s spoiled him!” the lady lamented. . ”If you respond to their cries, they’ll always think that you’re going to do it.”

And I started to look for a brick. Lucky for her, the ones within immediate reach were well mortared into place.

The other lady was also aghast. “Right,” she agreed, pushing her stroller. “Kids, you have to teach them to self soothe while they’re babies. Let them cry, they’ll figure it out.”

“Exactly. We have other stuff to do, right?”

I’ll say this: you’re free to have your opinion and likewise, I’m free to have mine. That being said, I feel pretty strongly about the idea of letting your baby cry it out. And by pretty strongly I mean F*CKING HATE IT. If the foundation of AP is building trust with your child, then CIO is the ultimate in breaking that trust. And at some point, it’s not about attachment parenting principles anymore, it’s about common human decency.

Letting your older child cry out a tantrum is one thing but in my book, willfully allowing your infant to cry it out nothing short of child abuse. Babies cry because they need something, whether it’s to be fed, changed, held or otherwise interacted with. So I guess, yeah, they are crying to manipulate you into something. God forbid your baby grow up to think that, I don’t know, you’re going to pay attention to them when they need it.

Imagine being completely helpless, unable to do anything for yourself besides cry to get your needs met. If you feel hungry or need to be changed or, hell, you’re just plain lonely — you cry because that’s the only form of communication you have. But no one comes. You’re still hungry/poopy/lonely and no one’s coming to aid you. So you cry harder. And still no one comes. So you cry even harder. And still, no one’s there. So finally, you give up defeated because no one’s coming. You learn to stop crying because no one is coming when you cry.

If a care worker in a health care facility were to systematically ignore the cries of a patient in need, it would probably be considered abuse. Yet parents do this every day to helpless babies and as a society, we call this good parenting and congratulate parents on teaching their child to self soothe?

Dammit, where’s my brick?!

I know that sometimes there are things that need to be done  – especially if you have older children that also need you. And that’s understandable. But for eff’s sake, at least look in on the child. Don’t ignore the baby because your hands are full. (And don’t get me started on CIO as a sleep training method. Somehow, that’s even worse. Respond to your baby during the day but at night, ignore them so everyone could get a good night’s sleep? At what cost, I ask?)

People that use the “other things to do” excuse get absolutely no sympathy from me. I had a baby who refused to take no for an answer and so I learned to do damned near everything with her strapped onto me at all times. If I can do it — with lupus, no less, though I didn’t know it at the time — chances are other people can do.

Also? How much a baby cries is not so reflective of  one’s parenting skills as it is the baby’s own temperament. Some babies cry less naturally — you call these the “easy” babies. They cry and fuss a little when they’re wet or hungry and otherwise, are little angels because apparently “good” babies are ones that we can’t hear. Others are more sensitive — these are the high needs babies who tend to be more sensitive and cry at the littlest disruption to the world as they know it.  But you know what? Responding to their cries will shorten their cries but guess what, they’ll still do it because that’s how they’re wired.   Amazing how that works.

Five years ago, I gave birth to this incredible little person. With her, we’ve learned about the joys of co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding and babywearing. From early milestones, epic tantrums, therapy for speech delays and creativity explosions, she’s had us on a rollercoaster from the moment she was born. And it just keeps going

She amazes me every day with how she’s growing and what a unique little person she is. I have never known anyone as sweet or as creative as my little (big?!) girl. I’m so lucky to be her Mommy and to be home with her to not miss a second of it! We love you TLE!!

I often say that TLE is a unique kid. While all kids are unique little snowflakes in their own right, I don’t think that we can argue that the kid that insists on being a cat while everyone else is having tea party is truly in her own category.

Being one of a kind, however, has its downsides.

One thing most adults notice about TLE is that she’s (usually) ridiculously friendly. (Apparently, just not to Santa. Or Yoda, for that matter.) Sometimes overly so, like when she when she rolled down her window to wave at the gangbangers in the car next door kind. Now I don’t know that they were gangbangers but it was a rough part of town with four hard looking dudes playing rap in a belongs in a 1990s Snoop Dogg video low-rider. (Why, yes, I freaked the hell out, how’d you guess??? )

She’s also friendly towards kids, almost always taking the opportunity to engage other little kids she may meet. This generally starts with a simple “hi” and then an excited torrent of whatever happens to be on her mind. Unfortunately, her garbled when excited speech coupled with her penchant for out of the box thinking means that it’s hard for some kids to really get a handle on her. And when that happens, a lot tend to shy away.

I took TLE to the mall to recently to let her play in the indoor playground. She was loving it, jumping from all the foam structures and having a general blast on her own. There was a group of three or four girls that were around her age, too. At some point, she tried to play with them. I caught her saying hi but missed the next part of the exchange. When I looked back, I swear to god, I witnessed the kindergarten version of ding dong ditch as the self-appointed “leader” of the little group made it a point to snub her and her obedient little mini-sheeples went with her. I caught their moms watching but shrugging and going back to their conversation.

TLE came up to cuddle with me a little and said to me in a little voice, “Mommy, I tried to play with those girls but they didn’t want to play with me.” She paused and cuddled a little more. “That makes me feel bad.”

The Mama Bear instinct kicked in and it took everything I had not to:

• tear into those little girls (and toss my coffee in their moms’ faces)
•  burst into tears for my daughter

I cuddled her and told TLE that sometimes, we can’t always get people to play with us. I told her that it’s their loss because now they won’t know how fun she is to play with. She accepted it and went back to play.

Another boy followed her around and asked her (as well as anyone in the vicinity) to play a game with him. After repeated invites, she joined and had fun pretending to be his cat. (I’m pretty sure the game was some kind of race/chase game but the little boy rolled with it and she played with him and a few others for awhile before drifting off to do her own thing again.

And as a parent, I’m really torn about what to do about TLE’s odd-duckness. The ability to make friends is a key human trait but we all make friends differently. I don’t want her to think that her way of making friends is somehow “wrong.  I don’t want to “fix” her because she’s not broken. She may not have a lot of friends but those that she does have, she likes fiercely and it’s clear that they mean a great deal to her.

Even so, I  worry about what her  general social awkwardness will mean for her in the future. She could outgrow it or she may not. Our society is so duplicitous, where we say we value uniqueness when in reality, what is really valued is homogeneousness.

Above all, I think she’s so beautiful for being so unafraid of being unique and I never, ever want her to lose that.

TLE is a crazily creative little kid who is constantly coming up with new ideas for things to make and is always eager to share these idea with us. Sometimes she prefaces her ideas with “When I grow up…” and then she’ll tell us all about the incredible things she’ll make when she grows up. The list grows longer and longer every day.

Today’s addition as simple, surprisingly sweet and just a little bit heartbreaking.

• TLE: Mommy?
• Me: Yes?
• TLE: When I grow up, I’m going to make you a lot of long pants.
• Me: Long pants? Why long pants?
• TLE: Because you can’t be in the sun.

Just about a week shy of her 5th birthday, TLE thinks about the fact that her Mommy can’t go out in the sun. And so she wants to make me long pants so that I can.

I hugged her and tried not to cry . She’s so sweet and always thinking about how she can help Mommy. I know that because lupus is a part of my life, it will be a part of hers as well.  Even so, I hadn’t realized how much she really understood — much less thinks about it at all — until that moment. I am so blessed to have such a sweet, thoughtful little girl. I just wish she didn’t have to think about such things.

Well, the day that we’ve been waiting for has arrived: the two local charter schools have started their lotteries. The first is taking place today and another lottery is happening two weeks from now. It’s the day we’ve been looking forward to/dreading since we moved to our current town.

And we couldn’t care less.

As I feverishly weighed the pros and cons earlier this year, I came to the realization that the more we looked into homeschooling, the more we realized we wanted to go that route. Homeschooling completely independently scared me but when we discovered the local charter that offers home schooling with a credentialed teacher and a generous stipend for extracurriculars and curriculum, homeschooling seemed much more possible.

Even so, the local charter still seemed a good idea.  That is, until allegations of a teacher duct-taping a student and placing kids under chairs for being rowdy during circle time. Surely there’s better ways to calm a rowdy student! The fact that the teacher had no disciplinary action taken against her and is still teaching bothers me. It’s not difficult for me to put TLE in that kid’s place. I can easily see TLE being disruptive in class; on her worst days, she can try anyone’s patience.

While a parent should do all that they can to teach a child to behave in a classroom situation, rectifying this IN the classroom as the teacher by duct taping a kid is absolutely ridiculous.

To make things worse, the allegations came hot on the heels of another incident at a neighboring school district (the “better” one) where a special needs teacher kicked a kindergartner with autism.

In short, I can’t trust the charter that was our first choice to follow up on questionable incidents to my satisfaction. So despite having waited years for these lotteries, I can’t say I care about the results anymore. Our decision has been made. This fall, TLE will be starting kindergarten at home through a home school charter program. We’re so excited to have our baby girl with us at home where she belongs!

If you’re a fan of House, MD  you probably know lupus as the disease to which Dr. Gregory House always scoffed, “It’s not lupus. It’s never lupus.”

For over a decade, I’ve been dealing with a myriad of off-and-on, mysterious ailments including unexplained joint pain, chest pain and incredible fatigue. I have seen at least half a dozen doctors who shunted me from place to place. I was diagnosed in Fall 2011 with Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease (UCTD). A little more than half a year later, with the appearance of sun sensitivity and Raynauds, this was later “upgraded” in Spring 2012 to a diagnosis of systemic lupus erythasmosus (SLE) better known as lupus.

Lupus is a disease I only knew a little about. I had a friend in high school named Nancy. She developed lupus when she was in elementary school and had all the classic signs including the moon face from prednisone and the butterfly rash. Her growth was stunted from the hormones and she always carried an umbrella. As cliche as it sounds, she was one of the sweetest, kindest soul I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Early in our sophomore year, she fell ill with pneumonia and died from the complications it presented.

There’s been this real disconnect with me and the idea that I have lupus. It’s been a struggle to openly admitting that I have a chronic illness, particularly an invisible one. It turns out that the idea of “But you don’t look sick…” isn’t just a problem for healthy people. Despite the constant pain and fatigue, I would look at myself in the mirror and have trouble accepting that I am sick.

When I was first diagnosed with UTCD wouldn’t take my medicine — I didn’t even fill it! — because I didn’t want to admit that I was sick. I would tell myself that if I just, I don’t know, could will myself to push through the pain and the fatigue, I could get better. Ridiculous, I know, but I’m pretty stubborn.

Admitting to myself that I had lupus would mean that I’d have to take a long, hard look at my life. And I’d have to consider the idea that, maybe, at some point down the line, lupus could take me from my family.

Nancy’s case was a rare one of childhood lupus but knowing that she had died because of it made me think that lupus is a fatal disease. Which it isn’t, at least, not all the time.

What it is, however, is a life changer.  It’s taken me almost a year since my diagnosis to really wrap my head around what that means for me and my family. It’s meant being realistic about what I can — and can’t — do. It’s meant having to set priorities and learning to ask for (and accept) help when I need it. It’s been a lot to accept and I’ve got a lot to learn and get used to but I’m more ready to accept my new eality than I used to be.

Project 365 – 20 February 2013

It’s fair to say that a lot of my identity as a person has always been intertwined with my current profession. Before TLE was born, being an IT professional was very integral to my identity. Computers were — and still are — what my life revolved around. Computers not only helped to keep a roof over our heads and food on our table, but have always been my primary source of communication and entertainment.

Even when I left the corporate world to become a work-at-home mom, I’ve continued to write extensively about computers. Watching the continuing assimilation of computers and computing devices into mainstream, daily life has been nothing short of fascinating. In that time, I’ve seen folks who have no other connection to computing devices other than touching an Apple product only once they were declared “cool” calling themselves geeks. (This used to drive me nuts but I’ve since come to the conclusion that my *headdesking* energy is better spent elsewhere.)

But being four years removed from daily IT tasks has had a real detrimental effect on my day-to-day skills. The Hubs ™ recently asked me to build a LAMP (Linux based webserver, running Apache, PHP and MySQL) box for him to load a demo database on to. I figured that I used to do this sort of thing in my sleep so repurposing one of our old desktop behemoths wouldn’t be a problem. Right?

Four hours later, I’m cursing up a storm — or rather trying hard not to curse because one of my Lenten sacrifices is to give up my cussing habit — because what had once been so easy suddenly… wasn’t. Getting the box up and running was simple enough. Getting the supporting apps installed so that I could run the box headless? Not so much. I’d forgotten some really basic set up steps. By the end of the night, I felt like a downright newbie.

I guess I’m just going to have to accept that I’m not nearly as much of a tech geek as I once was. Or I go the other way and rebuild the box for the heck of it and start working on that primarily just to keep my skills up. Just for funsies.