Maebius Musing

We had some wonderful friends of ours stop up to visit recently, and have scheduled out some camping trips, and a Starwood Vacation this summer. He’s an engineer, she is an awesome “The Body Shop” saleswoman. (I love their Satsuma line). They have a 2yr old son, and watching their style of parenting gave me a good pondering for my own…

(The below is not meant to challenge or downplay the discussed strategies in parenting, merely highlight some differences to my own method, and ponder in an intelligent manner. I welcome debate. Please leave egos at the door, ye sibling/friend reading this!)

It’s interesting to see how different folks bring up their children, and if looked at in an unbiased manner, allows me to change our own thoughts and techniques. Parenting is an evolving art, and no amount of books can prepare you for the squiggly details of day-to-day parenting. It’s fun, it’s frustrating, but it’s entirely awesome to go through.

One big thing we do with our son is allow him to sleep in our room, and even our bed, whenever he wants. Granted, I’ve often lost sleep from from blunt-foot trauma to my nether-regions, fought the sleepy cover-theft-tango, and such, but we enjoy nestling in at night with a story and seeing a little face yawn and close his eyes right by the crook of his arm. We also are pretty well entrenched in the “mom or dad goes to bed with him” routine. If we are watching a movie, or playing outside, weekend bedtimes tend to stretch a bit later than “officially recommended”, but we sleep in the next day.

We’ve maintained that when he gets older, and school starts up full-time, there will be a period of weaning from this system, as he will need to get up before our current schedules allow for. I fully expect a week of hell when bedtime shifts closer to 7pm and it’s “Still light outside!”. I’m prepared to sleep in his room on the floor. However, even now, there are days when our little one actually requests to go in his bed. (This usually lasts until the midnight pee-time, whereupoin he’s back in our bed, but that’s easy enough to redirect when we bring him up to lay down again).

I see the Pro of the [perceived] mainstream method of “kid in own room, at own bedtime, good night now, shut door.” It gives the kid a set routine, which is important. It allows parental quiet-time in the evenings to work, chat, or whatever. In some part of my brain, I’d rather like that, but our current schedule with the wife waking at 5:30 is one factor our basic “mom and kid go sleep in bed now”. Yours truly then gets to stay up a bit later and play on the computer, or dry dishes, in peace.

It’s an interesting balancing act, between structure and coddling. There are many other things we do which seem odd and even “wrong” to some folks I know. We play video games for an hour if he’s been good at school. Some say games are just setting him up to be a TV/gamer junkie when he’s older. Yet we do limit the time. What weekend visitors do not see is the mid-week fuss when he wants to play and we enforce the ‘No’. I’m a huge proponent of outside time, whether we work in the garden (which bores him to tears), or run around with a bat playing the current favorite-of-the-week “pretend”.

Yesterday, we walked the entire fence line, just my son and I, at his lead, pretending we were “adventuring dragons”. My legs were not up for it, and there was plenty to do back home, but it was “Daddy hour” so I hiked through tall grasses and dodged ubiquitous thorn clusters. We found such geographic realms as (A)Reed Forest (near the pond), (B)Buttercup Field, (C)Spyro Flower Hill (so named because of unidentified purple flowers), (D)Thorn Path, and (E)Cow Skull Treehouse, and finally (F)Tree Slide Hill. This was a ton of fun, and something we encourage, though a family member expressed concern with encouraging him to wander so far away from the house.

There are many other examples I could toss out, such as snacking throughout the day, eating something different for dinner (Not that we allow just anything for dinner if he doesn’t like what we have, he just gets bigger servings of sides), and such. Yet it all comes down to one point.

Structure vs Freedom.

There are many points along the bell curve, and I’m finding we fall distinctly on one foothill slope. Are we too far down one side? Perhaps. But I’ll hold my tongue and accept that there are many, many other points along the curve. Life is nothing if not diverse. I like how we live, and will support our son, even if he grows to become the complete opposite of us.
…and if you are at all interested in “The Dragon Adventure”, I’ve created a map using Google Earth. Labels are described above.

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I have a full-moon post in draft, honest. It concerns navel-gazing and friend-visits. It’s just still stuck in outline form and needs fleshing out, which is tough at work this week due to being the only one in the office (coworker vacation FTL)…. so, in no particular order a few mini-posts glommed together over the course of this week:

We have four new pets in the house, who look surprisingly like Mitosis. (brought in after their nest got lawn-mowed and fur-poofed.) They are SOOO CUTE! Will get pictures ASAP.

I am really enjoying “World of Warcraft” again. Apparently, I am getting a reputation as a darn-good healer even with quasi-crappy gear, and am starting to get randomly spammed invites to lvl 70 instances when I am online. Just dinged lvl 68. Also, Kanandi’s guild-mastering is getting much easier, since we now have a stable core of active people, and officers got clearly defined roles. Our casual nature made me frown upon seeming authoritative, but once I hammered out some basic outlines of what I needed people to handle, they offered to help and there was a sudden, blessed, synergy. It just works now, with little administrative crap to deal with. This frees me up to random-group heal. (Fact that a call for donations to upgrade our guild-bank resulted in 1,200 gold being donated over one week says a LOT for the loyalty and cooperation of my guild, with only three of our members at lvl 65+)

I completely rearranged my buttons, made a few simple macros, and such for my hunter, Nookni. While he is still stuck in Azeroth, I used the techniques and habits I got into with Kanandi-healing to put the most commonly used abilities on the same keys. This suddenly made using my hunter to farm and grind XP a whole exponential-level easier. Not sure why I didn’t do it before, but suddenly, it’s FUN to play the [solo] hunter again, and the lack of fun is why my prist is lvl 68 after my hunter of ~3 years is only lvl 55.

Also, just felt to need to brag that I was fighting a group of 4 demons a level below me, and managed to chain-trap one of them FOUR times, kept the crab off-tanking one, and proceeded to kite the other two with spams of wingclip, concussive shot, and WyvrenSting. Oh yeah, I was awesome! (drained mana pretty well, but only got hit a few times and was still at 90% health! I coulda taken 5!) I had never, ever done something like that so efficiently before. WoooHOO!

In other news, the garden has some tiny sprouts visible now, the seed-trays are going outside this weekend, and I hope to string-out my labyrinth on Sunday or Monday so we can begin officially hauling piles of poop to outline it. I was somewhat holding off in hopes of borrowing a roller to flatten and properly prepare the site, but recent walks around the area seem to lean me towards keeping it as-is. Might have better ‘natural resonance’ that way?

The hops bine[sic] is climbing steadily up the tree-post and is about level with my shoulder now, for those of you keeping track.

I have this sudden general sense of anti-ennui regarding my life. Nothing I can put my finger on, or point to other than the weather getting warmer, getting more stubborn in making my son go to bed ON TIME, and work being busy enough to keep me occupied, yet not overly stressful. Busy, yes, but hectic, less so.

A recent visit from friends of ours (who is an engineer) showed that a bit more structure might not be a bad thing. Doug almost wants to go to bed, and is fussing less and less now at night, so we might be over the initial hump of being firmly “Do it, now…because we said….now”. (more on this with up coming Moon-post).

That’s all for now…

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Our little one is entering Kindergarden, and turning 5 years old this fall. (He’s all growed up!) What follows is a photo-spam of his recent school artwork, and him riding the buss when they visited the Kindergarden school this week. Dialup users BEWARE!

He went in for his official evaluation yesterday, and completed the battery of tests with fairly predictable and proud-parent results. Forgive me for a bit of well-intentioned bragging.

As for mental development, he was well over average in terms of vocabulary (he’s reading signs on store shelves now, while his Pre-K peers are learning their letters), and impressed everyone with his creativity, and exuberance to get tested. Average IQ for intellectual/creative/vocab wound up being somewhere around 125 (vocab/language skill was up at 131!).   GO BOY!

Otherwise, our concerns about his general habit of fidgeting during class, not paying attention, and constantly mumbling stories or singing under his breath were slightly assuaged. This type of behavior is slightly disruptive, but…. His ability to memorize lists and such, even though initially outwards he was not “paying attention”, then reciting them back later and getting all creative like saying them backwards, showed that he fidgets because he’s somewhat ‘bored’ with the simple things he does in school. Thus, he fidgets to stay stimulated.

One noticable improvement-area was a possible lack of focus in his left eye. He can not cross his eyes at all, and turns his head to follow a pencil moved towards that peripheral. Granted, I can not cross my eyes either, which my wife never knew. Nothing as serious as needing glasses, just something to watch… (and if he does, they will need to be prism glasses, like vertical bifocals). Otherwise, I’m going to summarize his “evaluation” as him being Gifted, and slightly out of focus, which causes the tired tantrums if he’s been playing games or inside all day. I’m guessing our noticing that video games tires him out slightly is due to effort at concentrating/focusing. All in all, a great report-card!

/cue Proud Papa.

In art, they made collages. The brown label/note reads as follows: “Piet Mondrain / Henry Matisse : Mondrain used primary colors and basic shapes. When Matisse became too feeble to paint, he did collages. We combined both styles for this project.” Our little one made the rather zen collage with three yellow shapes, centered on black. One circle, one square, one triangle. “That’s all it needed”, he said.

Next, we have the portrait class. He has two teachers, one with straight short hair, one with curly hair. See if you can tell which one is which.

Next on our Tour De Artiste, we have the interpretation of “sunflowers” by Vincent Van Gogh. Doug’s is the one of the bottom left, which I think looks remarkably like an orange dragon traipsing through a wooded field. He describes it as “The yellow are dandelions, the green is chive stems, and the orange is our yummy violets because she didn’t give me purple.“. How kawaiii!

Finally, the wall outside their Pre-K classroom, filled with painted flowers, bumble-plate-bees, and a rainbow of hand-prints.

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(warning: A Looooong glimpse!)

Last weekend (April 12-13th) my son and I went on a trip to the 4-hour-away-now hunting cabin I used to frequent when I was younger. My dad, brother-in-law and his son, and some of the old “hunter gang” were there, plus a few kids I had not seen before. We had a fun time! *** -No Girls Allowed- ***

In talking with everyone, we realized I was last at this cabin around the age of 15 or 16, which is around half a life ago! The other man there, my age, had two kids with him, and while we were never really that close (being simply sons of our father’s friends) it was nice to reconnect on a mutually understood ‘weekend campfriend’ level and discuss random life events and swap parenting stories.

There were 6 younger boys there, ranging in age from 3-14 with all but the teen being under 9 yrs old. They had fun catching salamanders, having adventures in/on/around the broken down pickup in the side yard, and a few impromptu ball-and-bat games that bore no resemblance to anything World Series. The older men, in addition to the three of us 30-somethings, were the three “grandpas” and the group rounded out with “Uncle Bud” who was father to one of the older grandparents there. Bud was fully blind, and had the timeless manner of a different way of life. He was spry in his steps, slow and warmth in his wisdom, and quick with the wit of a practiced cynic.

We joked to him, after catching enough salamanders to feed a third world country, that his rocks on the trails were all overturned, so he should be careful, yet a quick hike to the nearby spring still saw him shuffle with remarkable spryness that defied his years and lack of eyesight. He KNEW that cabin and the woods around it. He may not have viewed it clearly for years, but it was his land, not by property deeds, but in spirit. (Having visited the property for more years than even my own father was alive, this could, I suppose, be expected)

The weather was perfect, with a bit of cool drizzle the evening we arrived, yet cleared up and sunny for Saturday. While I am not really into the hunter-mindset, it was with a fond nostalgia that I watched most of the others go through shell after shell of ammunition. No soda can or plastic water-laden bottle was safe from the .22 rifles. A box of orange clay-disks soared and shattered above the field in a flurry of shotgun pellets. Even yours truly, who has not fired-off anything remotely boom-sticky, took 20-gauge to shoulder and blasted 3 out of 4 clay skeets.

And those flying targets felt good. The shotgun rested tight; the bead steady as I swung towards the sailing clay; and a gentle tug on the trigger. #BOOM# missed the first, then three more broke apart like I had been doing this for years. Pull…aim…Boom. Reload. Pull…aim…Boom. Pottery fragments flew apart. It felt magical.

There was the not-quite-as-fun moments, like breaking up the inevitable child-argument (anyone with young kids knows that playtime sometimes requires adult intervention). There was the late night, sleeping in the room full of military barrack-bunks surrounded by either snoring old men, or wrigging dream-held kids and listening for the ‘THUD’ of gravity finding one outside the cots. There was the alternately cool and over-hot of the woodstove that made dressing a delicate dance of t-shirts and wool undergarments (often within hours of each other). And yes, there was the diet of crackers, soda, and grilled meat for meals (with the standard meat and eggs for breakfast). By sunday night, I wanted something green and leafy. *grin*

Still, even with the ‘challenges’ of camping, it is part and parcel of the experience. Such weekend outings need the minor bumps to make the entirety of the days a wonderful blessing to have attended. It felt deeply -fun- to be with the guys and just do whatever. They shot their guns. I tried a few shots myself. We hiked through the woods, drank directly from the spring, and cooked marshmallows over the coals. We slept in the next morning, and feasted on hearty sustaining camp-food. It felt magical.

And thinking back, as I did my daily meditations today, I realized it was magical.

Perhaps it was reconnecting to the primal hunter mindset. Yet, in some sense, the same thing happens when I visit the old Zen-porch crowd. In that group, no guns are blasted against cans, yet the bond is the same. It goes beyond words and eases into a comfortable silence watching some movie or game. And even in that group, I am blessed that the women are liberal-minded enough that any wise-cracks about their gender, or other male-centric topics (such as gastric processes) are accepted and retort-worthy in their own right.

This past weekend was, to glance quickly at it, a bunch of guys just hanging out at the woodland cabin. To glance closer, it perhaps was a bunch of guys attempting to connect with some primal hunter mentality. As I think a bit deeper on the weekend, it was more powerful, and yet more simple. We bunch of guys hung out at the woodland cabin.

It was something I had not done for a long time, and is sadly missing in a lot of mundane life in today’s culture. I begin to see a hint of why the AODA’s current leader frequently talks about fraternal organizations. There was a sense of deep connection between everyone there. Something unspoken, and brushed off as “girly-talk” if even dared to be mentioned by one of the kids. Yet it was there.

Thirteen men and boys, together in one place for two days. Four generations from varied backgrounds, and two states, sleeping within feet of one-another, sharing the same table, and vowing-without-saying to leave politics, religion, and our outside lives behind for a day. To just enjoy the weekend and Be.

I loved it.

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Firstly, this is more rhetorical, but comments are greatly appreciated, as there are big shreds of truth behind the example. It’s been too busy to have a proper New Moon Musing, so pretend this is one, if you’d like….
Edit: pesky uploading-at-work filling the second part of this with ASCII garbage. I’ll re-upload when I get time this weekend…if I get free time online.

There comes a time as a parent, when one’s thoughts turn to the proper upbringing, and relationship of friend-but-THE-authority that evolves as a child ages. At first, during the stages of pregnancy, we planned all sorts of rules and regulations, the types of games we’d play, and the values we want to teach to our offspring.

In terms of socialization, it was discussed in great length the types of talks we would have as our only child went to school and inevitably encountered those “other kids” who might not have the same type of personality. You probably know what I mean here. The bullies who help give us opportunity to discuss social-anger redirection. The selfish kids who help teach that sharing is preferrable to hoarding the school’s toys. The teachers who help re-enforce an authority-figure status among adults. The list goes on.

And yet, in addition to the more immediate life-lessons presented in preschool, there is the fowarded parental gaze, which thinks of things to come. Girls, homework, college, girls (or guys, no pressure there), and the teenage angst-filled years to prepare for. Without dwelling on such topics, it is still something all parental types probably think about from time to time. (I hope that ALL parents do, but sadly, I know this is not a perfect world).

My musing this week, however is related to those types of questions when they involve someone other than one’s immediate offspring. Specifically in relation to the angst-filled teenage years. For example, the elder-child of a friend who stays over at our house. This other parent may have mentioned that they appreciate having us available as a safe place to visit, and enjoy our lifestyle and ethical acceptance of many less ‘mainstream’ ideals and philosophies. I do not judge easily, those who are welcomed into our home. Yet this means I become ultimately responsible for the care and teaching example-setting that happens around such guests.

Those who know me well probably know that I am not one to push my own values on others. I live as I live, and figure if folks appreciate my way of doing things, they are more than welcome to try them out too. Not all my friends would be as accepting of raising beef only to eat our ‘pets’ later. But I don’t hide the fact that the burgers for dinner were once named Norman if folks ask.

But what happens when I am asked specifically to impart some specific parental authority and wisdom towards those who may be a guest in our house? What if, one of our visitors displays some behavior that may not sit as safely within my comfortable acceptance zone? As an adult, and responsible party at our household, it is my moral obligation to address this topic. Yet as a chosen friend of the guest, my own nature does not wish to make waves and force a confrontation that could result in less happy feelings towards visiting us. Nothing actually happened during our visits, but our guest has told stories about events which cast a doubt in my mind about this person’s choice of friends. It’s the proxy-parent syndrome at it’s finest.

Mentioning, without going into details, this topic to the parental authority of our guest tends to result in an over-protective reaction, where my hesitant and minor complaints are overblown into “well, he better straighten up if he knows what’s good for him” style replies. This is also against my better judgement and not the nature of how I would deal with the topic at hand.

This whole situation involves nothing overly serious or illegal at the surface. It’s more a choice similar to “inviting the less popular kid to play Capture the Flag in the woods, and leaving them there to go do something else” rather than “vandalize the less popular kid’s locker or stink-bomb their house”.

Thus far, I have not addressed the situation with the younger guest myself, but feel some vague concern that I really should. On one hand, I think back to my own past and teenage years. At 16, I did a few things I wouldn’t encourage others to do, and yet I still think I turned out alright. One of my ‘favorite’ memories from Boy Scouts was replacing the drink mix with orange-flavoured laxative and watching the poor low-ranking kids play leapfrog with the outhouses all morning. Us teens could be downright mean, and I’d NEVER encourage this prank with my own son…yet I know something like it will happen.

We all live and learn lessons in life as we get out in the wilder world. I also had the luck of a decent set of parents, and stable home environment, which is a good bit different from the guest at our house. I have no personal reference point to make exact comparisons with.

So, to avoid rambling on for about eight more pages of hyperbole and vague comments (due to refusing to name specifics here), I’ll wrap things up for now.

To summarize my musings lately, what role does a surrogate parental figure have in relation to another teen who enjoys visiting us? Do I err on the side of authority and have a serious sit-down-talk, which I KNOW from experience (with other topics and another friend of ours regarding this person) will result in casting me out of the “safe place to hang out” and into “overbearing Parental figure” territory? Or do I err on the side of “being the cool safe place to hang out” and merely remind the real parent of my thoughts regarding the issues?

I don’t need answers from you, kind readers, for that is not why I muse here. Comments are welcome, but I plan to look back on this posting and see how things turn out in a few month, and wanted to put down in words what my brain’s been pondering this week.

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