Justin had a little bit different plan…as Justin usually does.  He decided to wear all blue.  To attract the blue jays, of course.

The car comes to a stop in the parking lot of the rose gardens and I turn the engine off.  The back doors immediately open and the boys are eagerly waiting by the car as if only being held back by an invisible leash.  We look both ways, cross the street, and watch the boys run in a blur ahead of us as Niki and myself try to keep up.

We return to “our spot” and at first glance, only one squirrel is roaming through the grass.  I scatter a small handful of squirrel food and we wait.  Within seconds, squirrels are scampering down the trees and cautiously approaching the food.

Niki is left in shock.  ”I’ve never seen so many squirrels in one spot.  Now I’m really jealous you went without me last time.”

The boys assume their positions and Niki pours food into her brothers’ hands.

The squirrels soon found themselves surrounded by us.  They checked us out.  Jutted away with any quick movements we made.  Even the click of my camera would send them running.  I had to choose carefully when to snap a photo.  Afterall, I did not want to be blamed for running them off.

Can you find all four of my kids in this photo?  Zach blends into the ground the best in this picture.

This is what happens when your sister comes along.  She placed peanuts on Justin’s back.  I will give her credit that it did make him stay still at least.

We didn’t get any of the animals to eat out of our hands but we have learned techniques we will use on our third attempt.  I think this is a good experience for the kids to learn that you keep tweaking your technique until you get the desired effect – science in the works!

This time around, we learned that if you want the squirrels or blue jays to come to you for food:

• Do not put ANY food out, even to attract them, unless it’s next to you
• Do not give the youngest child a handful of food because he will drop it on the ground far away and the squirrels will go to it instead
• Go even earlier in the morning so other people at the park do not take pictures of us trying to feed the squirrels and blue jays and thus scare the animals away
• Peanuts are squirrels and blue jays favorite
• Put the youngest child on the outskirts of our circle because he doesn’t have the patience to sit still and not scare off animals when they get close

Obviously, the sprinkler system is on but what you don’t see is that the boys have planted themselves literally within an inch of it reaching them as it rotates in a circle.

We started with tree identification.  We found an Eastern Redcedar and two kinds of oak trees – before we got permanently distracted by the wildlife in the park.

We were on the hunt for more plants when we came to a small fountain and found tadpoles.  There’s something about boys and water.  If there’s water, they will find it…and be mesmerized by it.

As soon as we realized how close the squirrels and birds would come in relation to us, we spent the rest of our time at the park identifying the animals.  The animals at this park seemed to want to pose for me.  I don’t often photograph animals but I have some amazing shots of squirrels from today.

It wasn’t long after this that we saw a lady on a park bench feeding the squirrels.  We wanted to feed the squirrels too.  So we all hopped back in the van and ran to the store to get squirrel and bird food and came back to the gardens.  Our mistake was scattering it all over the ground and then hoping they’d come to us for the peanuts.  They close though.  Very close.

I thought for sure this squirrel was going to come to Chris.  At the last second, he darted off.

I did not know, until today, that blackbirds and crows are not the same bird.  Blackbirds are significantly smaller than crows.  There was one crow at the park with us and a group of the blackbirds were consistently shooing it away from the bird food we put out.

This is the only animal we didn’t identify today.  It was too fast for us to figure out what it was.  I’ll have to show the boys tomorrow that I got a picture of it and we’ll look it up.

It was hard to get a picture of the blue jays.  They would swoop down from the trees, grab their food and fly back up.

There are five squirrels in this photo.  (One is very hard to see.)  At one point, I saw nine squirrels in the group.

Chris tried so hard for a blue jay to swoop down and grab food from his hand.  He stayed like this for a good 20 minutes.  (Be seriously impressed by this.)  When he finally gave up, he popped up his head and said, “I think it’s my clothes.  I need to wear green next time.”

As we were leaving we saw “Peter”.

Seriously, click the link and come back.  It’s short and worth the read.  I promise.

This is the best analogy I’ve ever heard about dealing with any type of a special need (especially with children) – physical, social, emotional, or anything in between.  We all have our dreams or expectations of what it will be like to be a parent.  When the realization hits you that your exact dreams are not going to happen…it’s a bit devastating.  But…ultimately it comes down to doing what you need to do for the well-being of your child(ren) because you love them.  You switch gears and adapt.  I absolutely LOVED the Holland analogy.

I think the most important element from the story, for me, was remembering the fact that I do have lovely aspects of Holland all around me.  It’s time to do some more sight seeing around here.

They decided to “get a tan”.  I have nothing to offer as an explanation.

~

It was quickly followed by dad finding a baby bird on the ground under our deck.  We went over to check it out and watched it hop around on the ground.  The mama bird was hiding under our grill so we decided to let her take care of the baby and check on them again later.

Baby bird

The mama bird had made a nest on Les’ ladder

~

While the boys were pulling weeds out of the garden, they found an acorn that had sprouted.  Pretty cool!

~

The boys also found a gigantic wolf spider hiding in a hole in the ground when they pulled up this plant. It had a large egg sac with it containing dozens of eggs.  Oh joy.  Those spiders always freak me out because they’re so big but they’re supposed to be good for the garden – eating bugs and such.  That just doesn’t help the “freak you out factor” though.  These are really common spiders in our state.  Ug.  I tried taking a picture of it but it was too dark in the ground for my camera to focus on it.  I’m leaving the size of the spider up to your imagination instead or you can click on the link above.

~

To top the whole afternoon off, Les taught us about Swedish candles.  The boys were glued to watching dad light the log and were anxious to see how it would burn.  The initial plan was to heat up a kettle of water for tea but then we decided to make lunch on it also.  It turned out phenomenally.  The idea behind the Swedish candle is to give you a campfire in the snow (so it’s up out of the snow) or when you don’t want to be adding wood to the fire on a regular basis.  It burned for several hours until the rain put it out later in the afternoon.

I threw together lunch in the pot.  We’ll call it a Swedish Candle Goulash.

Swedish Candle Goulash Recipe:

• 1 pound ground lamb
• 1 pound ground hamburger
• 1 package of baby bella mushrooms, roughly chopped
• 1 bell pepper, sliced
• corn sliced off of 3 ears of corn
• 1 bottle Irish beer
• salt and pepper
• handful of cilantro, roughly chopped

We cooked it on the Swedish Candle for about 45 minutes and stirred it twice to check on it.

]]> http://www.adventureswithmykids.com/2012/04/26/adventures-in-our-yard/feed/ 3 http://www.adventureswithmykids.com/2012/03/30/looking-back/ http://www.adventureswithmykids.com/2012/03/30/looking-back/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:37:37 +0000 Jenny http://www.adventureswithmykids.com/?p=910 So often I’m consumed with looking in the direction ahead of me with my eyes fixated on the path I intend to take that I neglect to look behind me every once in awhile to see where I came from.  There’s a fine line between living in the past and never looking back there again.  I think about where I started with my boys.  The heartaches.  The headaches.  The drama.  The exhaustion.  The failures.  Even six years later, I get caught up with how much I still need to accomplish with them.  The circumstances they faced in the time before living with our family was beyond their control – but it left them significantly behind their peers and in some ways…a bit broken.

Every once in awhile, I get a glimpse of how far they’ve come.  They went from taking things out of complete strangers hands, pockets, and purses in church – to standing respectfully and quietly during a service.  They went from eating out of the trash can in my kitchen – to asking for a snack.  They went from peeing on their bedroom floor because I asked them to pick up their room – to peeing in the toilet.  They transitioned from screaming in the middle of the night because they wanted snuggles – to walking nicely to my bed to ask for snuggles – then to sleeping through the night completely on their own.  (This was over a five year process and I can’t even guarantee I won’t be woken tonight and asked for a hug.)  They went from writhing in pain as I cradled them in my arms and rocked them at bedtime – to asking to be rocked.  (I’m not exaggerating even a little bit on any of these and there are many, many more examples.)  We…have…come…a…long…way.  BUT…we still have a long way to go.

This was an actual trip to the store.  I asked for a picture to be taken so I could remember how I actually pulled off taking all six kids to the store with me on a regular basis.

It’s important for me to look back periodically.  This is when I realize that I have, in fact, made some difference.  My efforts are not for nothing.  It’s just the longest, slowest process ever with no guarantee that everything will be “fixed” in the end.

I’ve been working on “The Book” and it’s helping me work out some things – both for myself, my kids, and my family.  Remembering and writing about these experiences from the past have allowed me to work through some painful memories and emotions.  For instance, letting go of two of my children.  (I see it more as abandoning but that’s a story for the book.)  Thinking about how I could have done things differently.  Realizing I can’t blame myself for not doing things differently because I didn’t know then what I know now.  Realizing my boys have a lot more healing ahead of them instead of wallowing in my own self pity because they didn’t attach to me the way I hoped and dreamed.  It’s almost like writing about all these experiences in this book are allowing me to stop running the marathon, exhausted and panting, and just rest for a minute while I watch everyone else run past me.  I needed the breather.  I needed to refocus…and I’m ready to run again.

You can visit Niki’s website at:    Nikolia Designs

]]> http://www.adventureswithmykids.com/2012/03/14/introducing-nikolia-designs/feed/ 1 http://www.adventureswithmykids.com/2012/03/08/a-hidden-community/ http://www.adventureswithmykids.com/2012/03/08/a-hidden-community/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:06:35 +0000 Jenny http://www.adventureswithmykids.com/?p=899 Last month, I decided to share my story about our recent miscarriage in hopes it would bring comfort to even one other person experiencing the same pain we were enduring.  To my surprise, I learned miscarriage is much more common than I ever realized and that there is a hidden community of women who have also experienced the sadness of miscarriage.  These kind-hearted women came from all over to comfort me and in thanksgiving to all of their endearing support over the past several weeks, I have dedicated this next post on The Sounding to all of them.

They’re going to happen.  This is a fact that I tried to ignore and pretend didn’t exist.  I was determined to fight against any and all distractions by readying myself with battle armor and defending the walls of our home school.  Distractions are far more powerful than anything I have to use in defense.  It took an epic battle where I crumbled to the ground in complete and utter defeat before I grasped and completely accepted this concept.

In the Land of Embracing Distractions, I use them to my advantage.  My parents have quite a bit of construction going on around their house right now to take care of drainage problems before it destroys their house.  It has been going on…for weeks.  (Okay, months…but who’s counting?)  Pre-Epic Battle, I would take the kids to the library.  This was short lived.  It was difficult to talk to the kids without distracting others around us trying to quietly do their homework.  I was pretty much limited to workbooks or reading which was a point of possible civil war for us anyway.  I also couldn’t use my normal “get the wiggles out” tricks in the library which eventually led to a nuclear meltdown for all four children.

Okay…so what was I going to do?  People are constantly walking through the entire house.  Tractors, workers, and machines of all sorts are directly outside the large picture windows lining the wall of our “classroom”.  Beeping, shouts, jack hammers, and loud noises start at 7am and end around 7pm.  I’m supposed to embrace this?!  Really?!  But…that’s exactly what I did.

“Okay boys…we’re going to make our own books.”  A piece of construction paper and several pieces of computer paper are folded in half and held together with two simple staples.  The boys are not at the point where they have the patience to write and illustrate a story completely on their own.  So, I provided a sentence starter on each page allowing each boy to choose how to complete it themselves.  (Ahhh…spelling in disguise.)  The boys read the sentence starters to me before they begin making their book and then they read the completed story to me when they’re all done.  (Reading.)  Then they illustrate each of their pages.  (Fine motor skills practice and handwriting.  Two with one stone!)

The title of Chris’ book was “They are Building a ____________”.

There are many men on the ground.

After Chris read his story to me, I asked him about this page, “Why are all the men on the ground?”  He casually told me with a concerned look on his face as if I had not been paying attention at all to the comings and goings of the backyard, “They take lots of breaks.”  Hahahaha…he should know, he’s been watching them as he does his school work.

Everything is a teachable moment:

“When are we going to swim lessons?”   A few minutes later, “How much longer until swim lessons?”  Okay…it’s time for a lesson in telling time.  Yes, we already completed all the worksheets concerning telling time but that did nothing to teach them how to figure out on their own how much time they had left between the moment they woke up and the moment we walked out the door to go to swim lessons.  My sanity was at stake here.  My mom even joined in on the lessons since I stopped telling the boys the answer and told them to figure it out on the clock which led them to asking grandma instead.  Both of us spent days (over a couple of weeks) reviewing with them how to figure out how much time was left until swim lessons.

***

One of my children inevitably asks me each evening, “Mom, can I help you make dinner?”  Inside, I want to cackle in laughter (mwahahahahaha) because they are about to get a school lesson in disguise and will love every second of it.

“Absolutely.  Pull out a 1/4 measuring cup.”  This is my favorite measuring cup because I can teach so much with it.  ”I need 1 cup of chicken broth.  How many times do you need to fill up that measuring cup to make 1 cup?”  My kids will tell you, from experience, that I almost always pull out the smallest measuring cup or spoon and have them do the math for whatever they need to scoop or pour.  Poor Mr. 1 cup and Mrs. 1 tbs.  They have been left forgotten for a very long time now.

***

Currently, I have Niki reading books on molecular gastronomy and our science lab is the kitchen…and then we eat it!  Our meals are varied and in depth some days.  Other days, they’re simple and quick.  But even on our simple days, I’m still thinking about what I can do to teach a concept or skill to them.  For example, peanut butter on rice cakes.  Simple, right?  Yep.  But the twist are the raisins.  I have them make faces on their sandwich with them.  There’s those fine motor skills practice sneaking in again.  I also save the chopsticks connectors you get with the kids’ drink at PeiWei and get chopsticks for the kids to use at home.  Do you know how much control you have to have even with the connectors to use chopsticks?  A lot.  Hey…I was taking some of my kids to occupational therapists for fine motor skills practice.  I want to spend less time at the therapists office and more time at home.  Therefore therapy is integrated into our day otherwise my kids would never have any time to just play.

Just Stop:

We travel cross country quite a bit.  We do it enough that after about the first hour of the drive, I’m ready to be done with it.  Ideally I’d love to drive with as few stops as possible and just get the whole thing over with.  But…I’ve learned time and again that the journey is where all the learning takes place – including a road trip.  I’ll stop at many of the quirky (but hopefully educational in some fashion) stops along side of the highway to let the kids stretch their legs and refill my patience tank.  We’ve stopped at caves, antique covered bridges, historical figure statues, volcanoes, ancient Indian villages, and so much more.  It’s always worth the extra 30 minutes – 2 hours.  Every time.

***

Leave or stop on a high note.  This became our motto during the foster care years and has carried over to today.  It’s not worth letting your child going into meltdown (aka tantrum) mode over something you know will trigger it.  I’m not saying give into their every whim.  Not. at. all.  They have to learn perseverance in some cases.  Right before you know they’re going to lose it (you learn that pivotal point as a parent), wrap it up and leave or stop.  This way everyone keeps the experience as a happy memory instead of a dreaded one.  Our experience with our six kids has shown that they will last longer with time but a great big helping of patience has to be acquired by mom and dad first.

Patience Reality Check:

Yes, I thought I had a lot of patience.  I thought I had patience to spare.  Then my children took off my rose colored glasses and showed me reality.  One of my favorite lines in “Beginning to Pray” by Anthony Bloom is that the author tells us via a story that God does not grant patience to us everytime we pray for it.  (Do we give our children everything they want when they want it?)  God provides opportunities for us to learn patience.  This had a HUGE impact on me.

I’d like to think that my patience level has increased over the last several years but I’m hesitant to say this in fear that my children will reveal that I took off the clear lens glasses they gifted me and  show me that I replaced them with the rose colored ones again when they weren’t looking.  But one thing I know for sure…God has provided me with PLENTY of opportunities to learn patience.  So many, in fact, that I’m willing to share some of my opportunities with any of you who think you need some opportunities of your own to increase your patience levels.  Just let me know.  I can arrange for a play date.  ;)

Photo note:  Niki made the pajama pants with the green fabric draped over the top of the mannequin.

Les and I met the rest of Niki’s classmates today.  We arranged for a super quick tour of Niki’s infamous sewing room since Les has not had a chance to see it yet.  Her apparel design program is a relatively small class of 15 comprised of only girls who have all become friends over the last several months.  Outside of class, the girls also text each other back and forth  - talking about various things including what they missed in class that day, setting up times to hang out together, and the not surprising, “What are you wearing tomorrow?”

Niki had told her friends that her parents were coming to class today to take a peek around the room.  When we arrived, the girls were all standing outside the classroom door chatting amongst themselves.  Niki graciously introduced us to each girl by name and I really enjoyed getting to put a face to all the names of the girls.

What I found out later this evening is that two of the girls spent a great deal of time getting ready this morning just because they knew Niki’s parents were coming today, which I was informed, is not the norm.  I learned that many of the girls in the room have developed a great deal of respect for Niki’s kindness but also candid honesty.  She is approached often with questions because the girls know they’ll get an honest and fair answer from her.  For example, one of the girls’ in the class has many piercing all over her face.  This girl asked Niki, “Do you think I’m pretty?  So many people stare at me and I’m sure they think I’m ugly.”  Niki nonchalantly replied to her, “Um….it’s your piercings.  YOU – are gorgeous.  People stare because of your piercings.”  (Niki’s right, this young lady was exceptionally pretty under all the piercings.)

This is not the only example but it demonstrates the point.  In my wildest dreams I would never have thought that my 5 min. presence in a classroom would impact two students so deeply that they wanted to make a good impression on us when they met us just because of knowing my daughter.  The impact we leave on our own children impacts those around them as well.  I’m kinda seriously humbled by this experience.  Seriously.