That Mythical Place

It's hard to believe it's been months since we set foot in a park or smelled green grass.  Summer seems like a different life.  This week there was a few days of relief from the worst of winter where it was in the 40s (the highest I saw was 46 which feels like heaven in February) so on Tuesday I took Ben and Tessa outside for awhile. 

 

We went for a ride in Ben's favorite yellow Fisher Price car which I wheeled around the blocks of our old neighborhood countless times every day last summer.  Ben always seems slow to grow and everyone else's kid is always bigger and heavier than him but now I have concrete evidence that he has indeed grown in the last few months because he barely fit in his car!  It's hard to see with his snow pants on but his knees are almost completely bent and his feet were at the end.  It has a panel that you can remove from the floor so he can power it with his feet so we will have to adapt it when it gets nice out for good this spring. 

 

I almost regret giving him a glimpse of the "outside" lifestyle because getting him inside that afternoon was a struggle and now he wants to go for a car ride every time we enter the garage.  And, as of this morning, it is regular old winter again.  The temperature dropped about fifteen degrees as we were on the way to the library this morning and the wind started blasting as the front moved in.  When I turned into our cul-de-sac I noticed that several of our circle's dumpsters were strewn about an one had blown almost all the way down the hill.  I started picking them up, not having any idea which one was ours and hoping that the city doesn't have some sort of serial number system to keep track in case I accidentally swapped ours with someone elses (I noticed there were numbers on them so I bet that they do!) but it didn't matter because when I looked in the one that had blown the farthest I saw that there was a used diaper frozen to the bottom!  I think I found which one was ours!  So I dragged it up the icy street.  I have had enough of winter.  With the slant of our driveway and the icy hill that we live on everything we have to do outside is a frightening adventure.  The area around our mailboxes is coated with ice and one night I stupidly walked out there in my slip on sandals and almost impaled my eye on the corner of the metal box.  I keep thinking that February is almost over...almost over...almost over...and March could be really nice.  But...it probably won't be. 

 

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks that might have deserved their own post but I got to backed up and now it seems like old news. 

Tessa is transitioning from 3 month to six month clothing.  The three month stuff still fits mostly but is getting short and her head is getting too big for some of the three month shirts.  It's fun to start wearing the next size but also sad because I am nostalgic about her cute little outfits!

 

This is actually from this morning.  Ben jumped in the crib when I was getting them dressed and wanted the "babeeee!" to lay by him so I let him have a moment.  Then he stole her pacifier. 

 

Here are a few pictures of Ben playing basketball.  He's pretty good and shooting and generally launching the ball where he wants it to go. 

 

 

He drags this little table around and uses it as a stool.  It's pretty annoying because he uses it to access places that were formerly safe like the kitchen counters.  If he doesn't use this, he drags the kitchen chairs around and ends up bashing them into the cupboards so I allow it. 

 

Also, his room had just been straightened.  It rarely looks that pristine. 

 

Yesterday I took out the "Bumbo" chair to see how Tessa handled it.  Of course, Mr. Skinny took over right away and now sits in it while he has a snack and watches TV. 

 

Yes, he is wearing Christmas pajamas.  He dug them out of his drawer.  They are size 3T that I bought for him to wear next year.  They look like they fit OK but they are actually way too long and look ridiculous. 

 

Tessa liked the Bumbo once she had her chance to try it out!  She was still a bit bobbly headed though so maybe we will wait a few weeks!  Just for fun, here is a picture of Ben's first time in the chair.  It was from May 30th, 2012 so he was a week older than she is now. 

 

 

I think they look like they might be related!

Here she is getting "fed" some dry cereal by her brother.  Don't worry, I was closely monitoring the situation.  He's so generous!  Except with a pacifier...



The iPad...

Lately, I have been worrying about exposing my kids to too much technology.  If you haven't gathered from reading my views on everything on this blog, I am generally relaxed about some things that other parents stress over (my main things that I don't worry about include TV, processed foods like hot dogs and chicken nuggets, breaking the routine on occasion and germs).  Everyone has there reasons for what they worry about and to each family their own.  But here is something that I am really starting to notice among other kids, and Ben, and I think it might be my "thing".  That thing is technology.  By technology I mean ipads and phones and their non-apple counterparts. 

This weekend, we attended the wedding of a former roommate of Justin's (more about that later) which was a Friday night mass.  That left Saturday open because I had a baby shower to attend on Sunday.  It is class B basketball tournament time.  Specifically, it was boys' districts at Mayville State University, which is an experience and location that has been present in my life since elementary school. My hometown team was playing, as was the child of one of Justin's cousins for a different team.  They didn't play each other, but they played the same night.  It was a fun affair.  My parents were there, as were Justin's and we thought Ben would enjoy it because he likes basketball. 

Well, he enjoyed it for about three minutes and then he wanted to get loose and roam around the "field house", which is a building as familiar to me as my own high school after the many basketball tournaments I attended as a fan and player and pep band member and camps and summer leagues I went to.  I know the weird stuff, like how to get to the old 1920s era gym and dungeon like locker rooms where they would place the lowest seeded teams and where in the hall of trophy cases one could find a funny old picture of their sixth grade teacher from his college star days to make fun of (hehe sorry Mr. S!)  It all came back to me as I took turns with everyone else entertaining Ben throughout the evening. 

What I noticed was that the atmosphere has changed a lot since I was a teenager.  And I think most of the change can be linked to the fact that everyone has some sort of smartphone with them all the time. 

These are the differences I noticed, and they are all things I actually observed at the tournament. 

Pre-smartphone days and back as far as high school games existed:

-Babies and toddlers:  They spent the game being passed around and held and fussed over.  Toddlers would be entertained as long as possible before being taken out to the hallway to run around with other toddlers while annoyed parents or grandparents or older sibling stood around and talked.  Often, some interested elementary school aged girls who liked little kids and babies would take over and entertain them for awhile and make a game of it.

-Elementary school kids:  Would act "big" by sitting with friends instead of parents, and if they got bored (I was often one of those kids) would end up roaming around the hallways and concession room in packs until a school authority figure came along and reminded them that they were there to watch a game, not to play in the hall and if they didn't settle down they would have to sit with their parents.  Then they would go ask our parents for $.50 to buy something to eat so they could hang out in the concession room without getting flack about loitering.  If the team had cheerleaders (usually only in boys basketball) the young girls would sit as close to them as possible and yell the chants with them and copy everything they did. 

-Middle school/high school students:  If it was an exciting game, would get really into it and yell and chant and try to distract the other team.  If there were no cheerleaders, some loud class clown type would instigate some cheering.  If it got really heated there would be bleacher stomping and even off color and unsportsmanlike chants which would lead to the principal or superintendent lumbering over and reminding everyone that it was a school function and if they didn't knock it off and shape up they would have to leave.  If the game was boring people would sit around and gossip and flirt and look at the program to see if any of the players on the opposing teams were attractive. 

What I saw on Saturday night: 

Babies/toddlers:  Still got passed around and fussed over but it was not unusual for a toddler to be distracted by a phone. 

Elementary school kids:  I noticed a lot of kids roaming the hallways and sitting in the concession room together but not together as they all stared at their phones.  They walked around with phones in their hands and usually were staring at them as they walked.  I saw a group of four older elementary girls, perhaps in fifth grade, sitting in the corner next the bleachers, leaning against the wall, absorbed in their phones.  I didn't notice any cheerleader groupies. 

Middle/high school students:  There was some school spirit shown but I know it was not as loud as I remember and there was not much cheering and chanting even with cheerleaders present.  I didn't see all of the student sections (there were fans from six teams present) but what I could see was a lot of people not really watching the games and missing the action in favor of whatever was on the phone screen.  The games were close and exciting and it really was a much more subdued environment than it would have been for close games in a tournament.  I truly believe it has changed because everyone has their mind somewhere else.  A lot of the noise came from the adults and not students. 

I was feeling kind of disappointed by what I was saw when, yesterday, Ben decided to get obsessed with our ipad.  I stupidly added a Thomas app with puzzles and a memory game.  He figured out how to assemble the puzzles (six pieces!  Genius!) and that is all he wanted to do.  I took the ipad away and tried to read him a book and he didn't want to read the book.  I decided I was going to hide it from him as soon as his attention was elsewhere.  Meanwhile, Justin came home and started playing the game they play when he gets home.  Ben hears the garage door and starts saying "Dada!" and then runs to the stairs as Justin creeps up on him to pretend to scare him.  Ben pretends he doesn't see him but is giggling the whole time.  This time, instead of running to the stairs he just stared at the ipad!  That was the end of that.  This morning I made sure it was out of sight before he woke up and he hasn't seen it all day. 

I started researching the subject of toddlers and ipads and I didn't like what I read.  There are lots of discussions and articles out there about this subject.  The consistent findings:

-Toddlers do indeed become very obsessed with screens and there is not much research about the long term implications because ipads and other tablets have only been around for a few years. 

-Many families are struggling with this issue and spend a lot of time fighting with their kids over these devices.  It is very common for toddlers to have complete meltdowns when the ipad is taken from them and many parents say that the tantrums are a whole other level of anger, aggression and the kids almost seem desperate and will ask and beg to have it back for days (hmmm...sounds a lot like an episode of Intervention).  One dad wrote in an article that he found his three year old in his room one morning with the ipad that he had quietly removed from its charger next to the parents' bed.  The battery was half drained which meant that he had been playing games for about two hours.  He was lethargic at preschool that day and the teacher expressed her concern.  Many parents, people who considered themselves good parents and good at discipline, admitted that they gave up because it was almost impossible to keep their kids away from technology and they honestly could not stand the fit throwing and whinng. 

-The standard way to get a toddler to stop doing something they shouldn't be or to calm a tantrum is to distract them with something appropriate and redirect their attention.  However, this doesn't work with ipads and phones because they are absolutely the most enticing item a child can have and nothing is more fun than a magical screen.  It supposedly appears in brain scans the way other addictions, like shopping or gambling, do. 

-Many parents defend giving toddlers ipads by saying that there are good educational apps to use and claim that their child is smarter and ahead of other kids because an app taught them colors, the alphabet, etc.  Teachers, however, say otherwise and report that young kids are getting more aggressive, difficult, and have horrible attention spans.  They also want instant gratification and have no patience and can't entertain themselves.

-Along those same lines, almost every parent who exposes their kid to an ipad (pretty much everyone in the developed world including us) says that they are amazed at how smart and talented their kid is because of the way they can learn to use it almost instantly and can use it better than their grandparents.  This is an example of "if everyone is special, no one is".  Really, a two year old using an ipad is not a display of being advanced or a genius.  High functioning primates can use them too. 

-Parents defend giving devices to toddlers because "they have to be ready for a tech filled world". 

-There was one study reported where researchers watched kids playing with ipads behind a mirror and then took them away and had them play with other toys.  When the ipads were removed, some kids started playing "ipad" with other objects.  YIKES. 

YIKES YIKES YIKES. 

I am no sanctimommy but I do not like any of this.  This is way bigger than a few episodes of Sesame Street or some McDonalds chicken nuggets.  The thought of my kids being zoned out on a phone or ipad as they miss out on the experiences of childhood that I remember, like cheering with the cheerleaders or gossiping over a slice of pizza in the concession room, really gets to me.  I have to stop it before it starts.  Also, when it comes to internet commentators, I am going to believe the teachers and not the parents when they say what they see from kids because parents only want to see the good.  Other people can do what they want, but I am going to try to make sure Ben learns shapes from this thing:

 
And not from an app.  And yes, we might have a shape app on our ipad.  That is not the one he gravitates to!  I do not believe for a minute that a kid that gets to spend hours on an ipad with educational apps will have an advantage over kids who learn shapes and colors from books and toys and blocks.  And as far a the "preparing kids for a technological world", I don't think swiping an ipad is going to give anyone an advantage when they start Kindergarten and on through their school and work life.  As evidenced by 18 month olds learning to use them, it is not that hard and anyone, can use them. 

I think we have been doing OK so far.  We travel a lot, making regular three an four hour drives on weekends and we have never given him a screen to make the trip easier.  He gets some exposure via watching us use it and watching videos of things he is interested in (such as tractors) but it hasn't really seemed problematic until yesterday. 

So, wish me luck!  Its been one half of a day!  And he's awake, so my beloved computer and ipad have to get stashed now!  Sigh...

Valentine Baby

For the last few days I have been thinking about taking some pictures of Tessa with a Valentine's Day theme to send to our grandmothers and also just to have since I haven't had her pictures taken professionally yet and she is kind of in the awkward stage where she won't do the cute scrunched up newborn poses but also can't really sit up on her own so I probably won't until she is a few months older.  At least these can fill a frame until we can get something better done. 

 

There was a Valentine's bib in a bag of hand me downs that we received and I used her striped leggings with a tutu attached that came with her Christmas outfit.  It looked pretty cute with that red chair but before I could even get a few pictures taken this happened. 

 

 

Spit up. Of course.  I feel like I am constantly cleaning it off of her and myself.  Today I had to change every item of clothing I was wearing except my socks because she evaded the receiving blanket and it ended up all over me.   So the bib came off. 

 

It was kind of challenging to keep her upright! 

 

This is one of my favorites!

 

Happy girl!  I love this one but I wish I had moved the other chair that you can see on the left before I took it!

 

Too much flash!

 

While this was going on Allan came in to join the fun and found a pile of blankets to lounge on. 

 

Ben was sleeping.  Otherwise these pictures would have never happened.  He would have been in her business the whole time.  He will be two soon and also due for some new pictures.  I can't believe it has been almost one year since I had his photos taken last!

Sports Weekend

On Friday, between compulsive Olympic viewing sessions, we went to visit Scheels to see the NDSU Championship trophies, also known affectionately as the "triplets".  There was all kinds of foolishness going on at this event, including a man with a chunk of the turf from the field in Frisco that he has been raising in a jar.  We just added to the mix.  Fortunately, a friend I know from law school was there at the same time with her baby so we took turns taking pictures for each other and didn't need to ask a stranger to deal with our circus. 

 

 

Ben was slightly more photogenic than usual in that he didn't immediately shove his hand in his mouth like he has been doing whenever he sees a camera these last few months.  He actually looked but didn't smile.  Oh well.  Here is our picture with the trophies last year. 

 

 

Ooooh he was so cute as a little 11 month old!  I will refrain from sharing the 2012 picture because I was about 47 weeks pregnant and my face looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.  I wonder if this tradition will continue with quadruplets? 

 

Tessa was looking fashionable in an NDSU sweater dress.  Good thing she was camera ready because she had her picture taken with the new Coach K.! 

 

The NDSU marketing person that was there put this photo on their Facebook page and it got over 500 "likes"!  What a popular baby.  I'm sure it had nothing to do with the coach being popular...He was a good sport in helping us carry on the tradition since Ben has a baby photo with Coach Bohl.  Right after we took her back and put her in her car seat spit up poured out of her like lava so we took the picture just at the right time.  No cute or special outfit is safe! 

 

After that was one we shopped around for awhile and we found Ben's buddy "Brown Bear"!  He was kind of scared if this bear.  I can understand why a little kid would be.  It's huge!

Another major success of the weekend was that we finally retrieved my jewelry hanging frame that I made a few years ago and hung it up.  It was attached to a metal school locker that I used as an overflow closet in the old house.  Now the locker is in Tessa's room an the frame is on our bedroom wall.  And, most important, the cardboard box full of costume jewelry that has been on our bathroom floor for almost six months is gone!  

Here are a few recent baby pictures from my phone for all the family members reading this. 

 

I am sharing this in conjunction with a story about a little boy who gave up pacifiers when he was a few months old and never needed or wanted one again.  That is, until the day his baby sister came home and used pacifiers.  Then, to get attention, he started snatching pacifiers and running off with them.  His parents initially took them away as soon as possible but then he started taunting them whenever he got ahold of one to get their attention and hopefully start a chasing game.  So they started ignoring it, hoping he would get bored.  But almost three months later, he is not bored and is in fact more interested than ever.  He has started dragging chairs over to the kitchen counter to reach the pacifiers hidden up there.  Sometimes he shows up with pacifiers that have been missing for several days and we have no idea where they came from.  He may have a secret stash somewhere. 

 

Ugh, TRUE STORY!  I am very annoyed with the pacifier situation and am still hoping he will lose interest.  The constant fight and regular fit throwing when we take them away is getting old and I am sick of cleaning the pacifiers that always end up in his mouth. 

 

I am being mean but I couldn't resist posting this picture of Tessa getting mad.  Her fussy face is so cute!

 

And here is a happy picture with some drool that is also cute.  I love her fuzzy little head! 

It's That Time Again!

It's time for the Olympics!  I never can decide if I prefer the summer or winter games.  Summer has gymnastics, swimming, diving, and endless heats of track and field events to mindlessly watch all day.  And of course, there is that hypnotic crew rowing.  Winter has skiing, which I enjoy myself even though not nearly at the level of an Olympian, skating, snowboarding, hockey and all those crazy sled sports. 

This year, as everyone knows, the Olympics are in Sochi, Russia, which I had never heard of before the Olympics were awarded to them.  I am excited, since, although I don't talk about it all the time, I have been interested in Russian history since I was a teenager and read an article in Newsweek about how some human remains had been discovered that were connected to the Romanovs, the Imperial family of Russia.  The short article told a tale of intrigue so fascinating that I was hooked and started researching online and checking out books at the library on the subject.  The Romanovs were the last royals of a long line of royals in Russia and very interesting and tragic people. 



For those of you unaware, a.k.a. people who were never a nerdy teenager who spent hours on the computer and reading library books about Russian history, the Emperor and Empress were Nicholas and Alexandra and they had four daughters named Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.  As was the case with many royal dynasties, having a boy to inherit the throne was very important and they finally had a boy, Alexis, but he turned out to be weak and sick with hemophilia.  Alexandra was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and that family was notoriously inbred and Hemophilia appeared here and there in the bloodlines of royals all over Europe.  The little boy was guarded and protected and barely allowed to make a move on his own because if he bumped his elbow or stubbed his toe it could lead to life threatening internal bleeding in the worst case and painful and grotesque swelling at the least. 

As was the case with all royal families, there was a court of close friends and advisors near the family and somehow a creepy faith healer named Grigory Rasputin weaseled his way into their circle.  He did some crazy voo doo healing stuff and Alexandra was convinced that he helped Alexis when he was in pain from bleeding episodes.  There is speculation that he influenced her politically and in turn she pushed his beliefs on Nicholas.  Some people believe she had an intimate relationship with him. 



This is Rasputin...yikes...I feel bad for that little boy waking up to those spooky eyes hovering over him.  It is very hard for me to believe that a beautiful queen who, according to all accounts, had a rare true love relationship with her royal arranged marriage husband would cheat with a creepy weirdo like this but she was so distraught about Alexis that maybe she did. 

During the rule of Nicholas is when Russia changed forever and Lenin and the Communists took over since, although life was good for the royals, there was starvation, poverty and violence in the streets.  In 1917 Nicholas gave up his throne after uprisings by the people and the family was sent to live in exile in Siberia and eventually killed by a firing squad in 1918.  There is a chilling account of their lasts moments told by a soldier who was there that you can easily find online but the short version is that they were lined up and told to pose for a photo and then killed in a barrage of gunfire.  Then supposedly their remains were thoroughly disposed of and made unrecognizable (until the 90's when dna evidence confirmed that some bones burned with acid were indeed them).  But through the years after their deaths a rumor persisted that Anastasia and Alexis made it out alive and people appeared here and there claiming to be them.  They were all proven to be fakes but it sure is interesting to read about.  I don't know how anyone would belief that Alexis survived being shot if a minor bump or bruise could have caused him to bleed to death but the fakes kept showing up. 



This is the Alexander Palace, their main residence in St. Petersburg.  I have a dream of seeing it one day.  It is a museum now.  I just saw that the website I used to look at, alexanderpalacetimemachine.org is still there and way better than it was fourteen years ago!  I wonder if Ben and Tessa would leave me alone for an evening so I can look at royal family trees and pictures of the royal daughters' living quarters for hours at a time?

Soooo, anyway, the Olympics are in Russian...I had a bit of a departure there.  I guess the old part of my brain that truly enjoyed learning was briefly awakened from my toddler raising numbness.  I was getting to the point that I am excited to see and hear about Russia during the next few weeks.  It's already off to a fun start with all the crazy photos coming from journalists showing the stereotypical Eastern European shoddiness of the hotels  and of course Bob Costas's swollen eye.  I have started using Twitter just so I can follow all of this foolishness and it sure is fun. #SochiProblems!!! My favorite is how that Russian official defended Putin and everyone else in charge by saying that they saw someone vandalize a shower in a hotel to make it look worse and everyone is like, "You are filming people in the shower?!"  Hahaha.  What a mess.  I guess the Opening Ceremony already happened and nothing went wrong so it's looking up for the Russians!

The Superb Owl

Last night was the Super Bowl.  In the past I might have spent it at a friend's house, at a bar, or hanging out with my friends in the basement of our sorority eating pizza and Doritos.  This year, I spent it in a battle of wills with a one year old for control of the TV.  Will it be the Super Bowl or the 27th viewing of "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" starring Shadow, Sassy and Chance? 

 

 

Having the capacity to understand how to use the remote control, I won and Ben lost and we watched the Super Bowl.  Justin was doing school work so he watched it in peace in the basement.  But I still lost because Ben and Tessa did not become self sufficient for the evening just because I wanted to eat chips and watch commercials for four hours.  At least we have DVR and I was able to see everything I wanted to see. 

 

The game was pretty dull and the commercials were kind of forgettable.  I enjoyed Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers at halftime.  That Bruno Mars can really entertain a crowd.  I guess my favorite commercial was the one where the puppy keeps running away from it's owner to reunite with his horse BFF back at the farm.  Awwww...so cute.  I also liked the one about "A man and his truck and an eligible bachelor" where the bachelor was actually a prize steer he was taking to mate with  some heifers.  So racy...The one about the veteran from Florida was nice too, especially since he was actually at the game.  There was no "God Made a Farmer" equivalent though, and nothing that I will remember like I remember "Cat Herding" from back in the 90s!

 

I saw references to the "Superb Owl" on Facebook and from now on I will refer to the Super Bowl in this way. 

 

 

Hee hee hee...

 

Since we don't have any Denver Broncos or Seattle Seahawks apparel Tessa wore her Vikings jersey that she got for Christmas. 

 

 

She didn't care at all about the game and spent the evening staring at the dangling objects attached to her rocking machine.  I caught her grinning at her brother which was cute. 

 

Over the weekend, Justin was fishing at Lake of the Woods with his friends from college and I was at my parents' house.  Their new house was getting painted so we went to check it out and Ben immediately was drawn to this ladder. 

 

 

 

He is a real climber these days.  I can't wait for nice weather so he can get loose at the park instead of trying to climb furniture, walls, the wall of bathtub (he really does climb the wall in the tub by grabbing the rods that are for holding bottles.  It's not very safe.) and everything else he can find.