Thursday, February 18, 2010

Encouraging your Child's Interests

I decided to write something so the forlorn message in the bottle would start moving down the list. For those who are interested, E.S.D still does not have a PhD, but she's trying to keep trucking along.

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I've always imagined I would be the type of parent that encouraged my child's interests and talents instead of pushing my own ideas of what they should be talented at, as long as those interests were wholesome. I think Joe is pretty much the same way except he is all about providing the 'right environment' so that certain things just might so happen to get ingrained in their system. They don't have to like superheroes, but if superheroes are in the toy basket, on the bookshelves, on our blankets, on our towels, on our dishes, etc., it's not his fault if they turn into pop culture nerds like he is, right?

Well, for awhile now, Lizzie has had a keen interest in a certain type of thing. You might wonder why I would let a child develop such an interest in this thing or things, but they seem to give her hours of delight. What is the thing, you ask?

Rubber Bands. Yellow Rubber Bands, Red Rubber Bands, Brown Rubber Bands, Blue Rubber Bands, Thick Rubber Bands, and Thin Rubber Bands.

We had a bag in our 'Bat Cave', aka storage room, and although we try and keep that room closed, she sneaks in there sometimes and one day she must have found our bag of rubber bands. And not knowing what joy would erupt from that baggie, we opened it and Lizzie's world changed. She even sniffed out her Grandma Swen's bag of rubber bands in her apartment and usually goes to find it within 5 minutes of entering the premises.

She doesn't eat them (well, on rare occasions she does wait for you to look at her and then smiles and sticks one in her mouth) and she doesn't seem to flick herself or others with them or cut off circulation in any of her phalanges.

Instead, she puts them in buckets and cans, any type of container really, and then she dumps them out. And sometimes she stands tall with a handful of them and lets them rain down. Other times she takes them behind furniture and stores them there. Pretty much our floor is constantly covered with rubber bands and at night it takes about 3 or 4 sweeps to collect them all from the crevices. Well, not all of them. I'm pretty sure we have some in random places that we'll find years from now.

My question to you all is this: How do I develop this interest?

Monday, February 15, 2010

Bottle Washed Up on Shore

I need help.
I am a doctoral student.
I am kind of tired of being a doctoral student.
The end is near and yet a marathon away.
Sometimes (and sometimes always),
there's just a million other things I'd rather be doing.
I need help.
E.S.D.

Hair Commentary

I just want to say (this is Emily), that we are aware that Lizzie's hair is still, shall we say, noticeable.

After viewing some of the pictures of her, you might say one of the following to yourself,
"Why don't they just cut her bangs?
Seriously, how is she going to develop normally if she can't see anything?
Are they such poor grad students that they can't afford bows or headbands or ponytails? Maybe I should spot them a couple bucks.
Do they know the meaning of gel or hairspray?"

To these and others, I reply,
"I'm a fan of no bangs. She's too young to contest or choose for herself.
We like to think of the vision block as a game. You know, like a constant game of peek-a-boo. Now you see it, now you don't. Plus, the human brain is quite efficient at filling in the blanks (visual, in this case). This is one of it's clever features.
We have plenty of bows and headbands and ponytails and we often implement them in hair control. This morning I told Joe I was putting in a bow and he bet it would last 30 seconds. It was more like 3. Ponytails do work, but they usually do not get implemented until after breakfast. And let's face it, sometimes they don't get implemented for several days.

End of story: I'm waiting for her hair to grow a bit longer and then just you wait. You've never seen the cutest, cleverest, creativest things I can do with little girls' hair.

I'd like to give a shout out to my friend Katie. She just started a blog and she's funny. She makes me laugh (not just on her blog, but in person too). I was just trying to be a bit funny too.

Lizzie and the Smoothie

This morning Emily and I were enjoying a delicious and nutritious smoothie. Lizzie, as she is wont to do, begged for what Emily and I were eating. I figure, "What's the harm?" What followed was one of those moments which I have had a few times as a parent where I was faced with conflicting reactions. Those two reactions were: 1) AH! Stop her, she's making a mess! and 2) I should get a camera and take a picture.

As I said, this has happened on more than one occasion as a parent. The only other time in my life I remember facing a similar situation (though with a very key difference to be addressed in a moment) was on my mission in Mexico. While living in Dolores Hidalgo I reached under my bed and pulled out my luggage which dislodged a scorpion which fell next to my bed. My mission companion and I each had conflicting reactions to seeing a scorpion on the floor. Namely: 1) AH! KILL IT! SMASH IT! SMOOSH IT! END IT! and 2) I should get a camera and take a picture. Obviously the key difference I referenced above was the strong urge to smoosh the scorpion flat as contrasted with a concern for the mess that Lizzie was making, but the conflicting urge to go grab a camera was the same.

In both instances the urge to grab the camera won. So enjoy some pictures of Lizzie making a mess with a smoothie:

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Trying the videos again

We've been made aware that there may be some issues playing the videos in our last post. So I'm going to try posting them again. Here's the one where the train ruins her peaceful ruminations:



And here she is playing in the snow:




And tasting the snow:


Monday, February 1, 2010

Lizzie and Snow

Lizzie has lived a pretty sheltered life during the winter (inside the apartment, car, church, car, inside the apartment, with occasional visits to the grocery store and the doctor sprinkled in). Such is life for the wee ones in chilly locales. But, one day we let her get to know snow. She was only out for about ten minutes, but she seemed to enjoy it well enough.

First, this video is pretty funny. Lizzie is minding her own business, when suddenly she hears a train in the distance, and it freaks her out.



I think we can all see the thought process that goes on in her head in between the next two photos.