Flora: I had the best dream last night.
Jane: Oh, yeah? Want to tell us what it was?
F [ with a giant smile]: I beat a guy up.
J: Um… why?
F: He had it coming to him.
One of those moments when I completely and totally do not what to say.
Being Ender Redux
I originally wrote this essay in November 2011, for the 2011 Family Christmas Book. But given Ender’s performances over the last few days, it seems appropriate to revisit it today.
Meet Ender. Little brother of Flora and Cinder. Son of Jane and Sean. Big brother of Maggie. Charmer of the entire world. Proof that gorgeous, grinning children never get disciplined, even when they’re doing things that make you want to sell them to the gypsies. Or, in the modern parlance, to put them up on Kijiji. “Free, to a good home: a two-year-old with attitude…”
Actually, Ender doesn’t have attitude―at least not in the way most people define it when they use it with reference to a child. Really, what passes for a cranky Ender or a distraught Ender is still an incredibly happy, easy Ender. It’s quite amazing. We sometimes engage in the the not-very-productive nurture versus nature debate. Is Ender the way he is because, well, that’s just the way he is? Or is he the way he is because he’s the third child, the one who has had to accommodate to everyone else’s set patterns and quirks, the one who got the already trained, relaxed parents?
We’ll never know. We just have to enjoy him. Adore him. And make more of an effort to document him, so he doesn’t totally resent us when he grows up and asks for where all the Ender stories are.
So, some Ender stories from 2011, as remembered by Cinder and Flora and his parents.
The most disgusting thing Ender has done to date: sucked on the toilet brush. And not on the end you hold. Think of that next time you kiss him.
The most embarrassing thing Ender has ever said: Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock! Rock! At the top of his lungs in the Glenbow Museum. Except it didn’t sound like rock. The r sounded like an f and the o like the short u. Yeah.
“Look what I taught the baby to do, Mom,” Part I: Ender, running down the hall naked after Maggie, swinging a hot pink Lego foam sword, yelling, “Die, puppy, die!”
“Look what I taught the baby to do, Mom,” Part II: R: “Ender, show Mommy the moon. The moon, Ender. Remember?” (Yes, the next frame is Ender taking off his diaper.)
The most adorable thing Ender does after pummelling Flora in the head with something hard: “Awie, Flora? Awie, Flora? En-duh kiss.”
The most adorable thing Ender does for no reason at all: Go up and down the stairs, singing, “En-duh-en-en-en-duh. En-en-en-duh. En-duh!”
How to get Ender to eat pretty much anything: Indicate that you would like to eat it.
How to get Ender to play with this trains, cars, or pretty much anything else: Decide you need to put them away.
The price of getting supper on the table with an Ender underfoot if Flora and Cinder are away: A flooded kitchen. He loves to play in the sink.
The price of washing the kitchen floor with an Ender helping: A flooded kitchen.
The price of five minutes of peace on the telephone: A flooded kitchen.
The thing I never thought I’d say before Ender: “For God’s sake, stop biting the dog!”
The day Ender discovered dinosaurs: November 23, 2011.
Most memorable quote Ender elicited from Cinder: “Mom, are you putting that pink diaper on him again? He’s a baby―he’s not colour-blind or stupid!”
Most memorable quote Ender elicited from Flora: “Now’s my chance to turn Ender into my slave!”
Ender’s word for penguins: “Fish birdies!”
Ender’s word for turtles: “Rock puppies!”
Flora’s favourite thing to do with Ender: Colour his face with Sharpies.
Flora’s least favourite thing to do with Ender: Change his diaper.
Best conversation Ender caused between his parents: S: “Hurry! I need to pee and the baby is grabbing the camera, the box of nails and my beer!” J: “Where are you?” S: “In the bathroom! Hurry!” J: “Your camera, box of nails, and beer are in the bathroom?” S: “Now is not the time to discuss the inappropriateness of me putting all these things in the bathroom sink. Just save my beer… and the camera. He can have the box of nails.”
Most frequent Facebook comment Ender has elicited from his mother: “Sunrises are over-rated.”
Best Greek myth analogy: From August 16, 2011: “Today, Flora is Hermes, messenger of the gods. Cinder is Hades. And we are all agreed Ender is Chaos personified.”
But the bestest Chaos personified you could ever ask for.
Pants Optional
Austen/Cinder: Moooom! Ender’s following me outside!
Jane: Just watch him for a few minutes; I’ll be right there.
Cinder: But he’s not wearing any pants!
Jane: Ender! You need shoes and pants before you go outside!
Cinder: He’s got his boots on. He’s just no diaper and no pants. [Pause.] It must be great to be a baby.
From the sitcom that is my life…
Strong start to the morning
Ender: Mama! I pee in potty!
Jane: Awesome! Way to go… um… if you peed in the potty, why is there a big puddle of pee on the floor?
E: I dump pee. Dump pee on floor. Hee hee hee.
J: Um… why?
E: Make footprints! (takes appropriate action)
Gets even better in the afternoon…
Flora: Moooooom! Ender’s biting the dog again! Should I make him stop?
Jane: Well–yeah! Get him off her! Why are you even asking me?
F: Well–cause if he’s biting Maggie, then he’s not biting me. [Pause.} Or you.
J: That does make sense. … No, for Chris’ sake, get him off her. Poor dog.
[five minutes later]
F: Mooom!
J: Is he biting the dog again?
F: No, he’s dragging me around the floor by my feet. I knew we should have just left him biting the dog.
Interlude for a telephone call…
On the telephone–the Vice President (Legal) of a Calgary investment banking outfit. Of course. At least it wasn’t the CEO.
Ender: Hello… Mommy? Talk with Mommy? … No talk with Mama. … I go have nursies. [Receiver slam!]
And wrapping up in the evening…
Jane (reading): “Holi is a joyous Indian holiday that comes at the end of winter. Holi is also known as the festival of colors. On this holiday, people run through the streets smearing strangers and friends with colored powder and douring each other with colored water. At the end of the day, everyone is decked out in all the colors of the rainbow.”
Flora: Oh, oh, oh, we could totally do that tomorrow to celebrate the Equinox. Can we, Mom? Can we?
J: Well, it would be very fun, I totally agree. But all our neighbours would pretty much hate us.
Austen: They already think we’re the crazy people, don’t they?
How two-year-olds clean the floor
Pro: My kitchen floor hasn’t been this smooth and shiny in, well, years, frankly.
Con: That gorgeous gleam? The remains of two dozen eggs from a biodynamic family farm.
The morale: Never, ever look in the fridge at four dozen eggs and ask yourself, “God, what am I going to do with all those eggs?” Because when you have a two-year-old agent of Chaos in the house–the Universe will provide. Oh, it will provide.
Love you, Ender. To pieces.
Book Piles
I’ve been quietly participating in Project Simplify at SimpleMom.net over the last couple of weeks. I love the Simple Media site and all (well, most) of Tsh’s and the other bloggers’ strategies and action plans. And participating in Project Simplify every year does help me cull and get control on the clutter. But my house never gets to look even like Tsh’s worst before photos.
And I think it might be because of the book piles.
This is what’s spread around the house right now:
Flora’s sleeping with Jeff Smith’s Bone. She’s got the books piled by her pillow and arranges and rearranges them in various configurations. They need to go to the library soon. I hope the Book Depository order comes in soon…
Both Flora are reading Goscinny & Uderzo’s Asterix. All of them. At least it feels like all of them. I think we might have left a few copies at the library. Another half-dozen, possibly full dozen, Asterix adventures are strewn around the house. So that no matter where one might plop down, there’s an Asterix within arm’s reach.
I’m reading them Jeff Smith and Tom Sniegoski’s Bone: The Quest for Spark. We’ve finished the first book and, um, lost the second. It’s somewhere in the laundry pile, I think.
Sean’s reading them JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit‘s been digested; Lord of the Rings is going down very slowly. A great put-to-bed book. Better than Moby Dick. (Flora’s also sleeping with Moby Dick under her pillow. If you can’t guess why, you have to read Bone.) All three books in the series are beside the bed. Just in case they suddenly finish Book I and need to get to Book II in a hurry.
On audio, we’re all listening to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief and Heroes of Olympus: Son of Neptune. Yes, at the same time. Well, not exactly at the same time. One mostly in the car, and one mostly in the house. Also Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In what seems to me to be completely random order.
Sean’s reading Felix Gilman’s The Half Made World. I’m re-reading Ngaio Marsh, everything. And reading for the first time Leslie Daniels’ Cleaning Nabokov’s House. Plus about four or five cookbooks. And Joy Hakim’s History of Science.
The book piles don’t just create the mess–it’s a pretty aesthetic mess, anyway. What they do is create an irresistible magnetic pull. There I go, marching to the bookshelves–or the kitchen pantry–hell-bent on ruthless decluttering and purging. And out of the corner of my eye I catch the Orson Scott Card book Sean just finished re-reading that’s in a “put back on the bookshelf” pile… I grab it, perhaps even with the intention of putting it back in its rightful place…
…and 15 minutes later, I’m sitting on the floor, reading it. Until one of the kids comes to me waving a copy of Bone or Asterix…
To read about Project Simplify, go here.
Raising 21st Century Kids
Austen: Flora! Get away from that window unless you want your naked behind all over Google maps or Facebook.
Flora: What? Did you see the Google spy car?
A: No–but I bet there’s a satellite somewhere pointing straight at your butt.
F: Jesus, can’t a girl have some privacy in her own house?
A: There is no such thing as privacy anymore.
(Note to self: Remember they hear everything you say. There is no privacy in the house.)
From the mouths of nurslings
From the mouths of Enders’ as they nurse:
Ender: Oh, mama, new one? New one?
Jane: What? Oh, yes, that’s a new bra.
Ender: Pretty new one. Thank you, mama.
Yes, baby, it’s all for you.
House Rules
A moment to pass on a message I needed to hear re-affirmed today:
“In this house…
We do second chances.
We do grace.
We do real.
We do mistakes.
We do I’m sorry.
We do loud. (Really well).
We do hugs.
We do family.
We do love.”
From the Plain & Simple Facebook Blog: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Plain-Simple/175012759267245
Education is…
“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.” Charlotte Mason
Actually, I have nothing to add to that. That’s it. That’s all. That’s everything.
PS I do sometimes get obsessed with Charlotte Mason, a 19th century educator/reformer who’s left behind a substantial body of historically dated, but nonetheless interesting and occasionally inspirational work on education. If you’d like to find out more, start with Simply Charlotte Mason, which is full of free e-resources about the lady and the authors’ more modern day approaches and implementations, spend some time on Ambleside Online, or better yet, go straight to the Handbook of Nature Study blogspot, which takes 19th century nature study and turns it into an incredible experience for 21st century children and parents.
Agent of Karma
Flora: Ender! Go bite Cinder right now!
Jane: Flora! What are you doing?
F: I’m making Ender an agent of Karma.
J: We’ve talked about that. You can’t be an agent of karma, and you can’t make someone an agent of karma. Karma just is.
F: Fine. I’ll just make Ender an agent of Flora. Ender! Are you going to bite Cinder or not?
J: Flora…
F: What? I have a mere year or maybe two while he’s in that do-what-sister tells you phase. Remember, you told me about that?
J: So?
F: So? I have to take advantage of it!
Lazy Homeschool Moms Unite!
From the AmongstLovelyThings.com: ”…”Me!” I shouted into the screen. “I’m that too-lazy homeschool mom!!!” … But I don’t really think it’s laziness, not really. It’s more like… “otherness”. I’m too busy with other things to be spending all of my free time planning and carrying out elaborate homeschooling plans.”
For the full story, go to this post at Amongst Lovely Things: http://www.amongstlovelythings.com/2012/01/why-im-no-homeschool-superstar.html
Listen and Learn
I’ve shared with you before how unaudio my Cinder is (“How am I supposed to learn to type with that #$@#$#@$ cow screaming at me?”). Yesterday, I had an illustration of how audio–and despite her love of drawing and art, un-visual in certain ways!–my Flora is. She was playing on Mathletics and doing pattern exercises. And whenever she’s done them before, I’ve heard her muttering to herself, “Blue circle, yellow circle, green circle–next one is a… blue circle.” She’s quite adapt at this, so I was taken aback by sudden shouts and frustration and “I just can’t do this!” And I look over, and the game’s changed a bit–she’s presented with a pattern, and instead of completing it, she has to pick the odd one out, the one that doesn’t belong. “All I see are the colours, and they’re so pretty, and the pattern looks just fine, look, the squares next to the triangles and circles, and how am I supposed to figure out what doesn’t belong?”
The one that doesn’t belong jumps out at me immediately, and I try to explain to Flora what to look for… it’s not working. I see her frustration mounting. And then, flash of insight: “Say the pattern,” I suggested. “Blue circle, green square, yellow star, blue cirle, green square, yellow star, yellow star, green square…”
“I got it, I got it!” she hollers. And talks herself through all the patterns.
Cinder, meanwhile, is doing something else on the computer with the sound muted and headphones on to muffle out the noise that is his family, so he can concentrate…
“Ender pee on the floor!”
Jane: Well, thanks for not peeing in my lap. I guess that’s something.
Ender: En-duh pee on floor.
J: Yeah. Where should Ender pee? Ender should pee in the toilet.
E: No, En-deh like pee on floor. Is fun.
J (pause): Fun? Why is it fun?
E: Make pee prints on floor. See?
… and before I make it to a rag, there is a trail of little pee foot prints racing down the hallway.
If you’ve ever wondered why our house smells funny… now you know.
Math + Gun = …
A short moment for a commercial interlude: I highly recommend Mathletics.com, a math website both Austen and flora have been rockin’ on for the last few weeks. With the following review by Austen:
Austen: You know what would make Mathletics better? You get points for right answers, right? But it would be so much better if you could use those points to buy guns and then fire them at stuff while you’re thinking.
“Floor Peas?”
The consequence of a two-year-old helping prepare dinner–a bowl full of frozen peas all over the floor. Siblings to the rescue… sort of.
Jane: Cinder, get Maggie out of here. Flora, help Ender get those peas back in the bowl.
Flora: Why are we putting them back in the bowl?
J: To eat them.
F: You’re going to make us eat floor peas?
J: They’re organic, sustainably grown floor peas, and I just washed the floor the other day. There’s nothing wrong with them.
F: Are you going to tell Daddy they’re floor peas?
Cinder: Daddy won’t mind–he ate those floor noodles, remember?
F: I don’t think he realized they were floor noodles at the time.
J: Guys, stop eating the floor peas, and put them in the bowl.
C: What’s the big deal? We’re just going to eat them out of the bowl after we put them in it.
J: Cause I want to sweep the floor after.
F: To remove the evidence?
J: No, to… you’d better not eat the ones that rolled too close to the garbage.
F: Do you think other mothers would make their children eat floor peas?
J: For God’s sake, I’m not making you eat floor peas, I’m asking you to pick them up!
C: I think the floor peas are delicious.
F: I still think you shouldn’t tell Daddy they’re floor peas.
J: Just put them in the freakin’ bowl…
Beast In Disguise
S: Guys, guys, come look at this, you have to see how cute Ender looks!
Austen & Flora (simultaneously as if they rehearsed it): He’s a beast in disguise! He’s a beast in disguise!
Agents of Karma
Austen (whacking Ender after Ender kicked him in the shins and threw a car at his head): See? That’s karma.
Jane: No it’s not. One can’t be an agent of karma.
Austen: One can get beat up just for referring to one as one.
Thank you, Big Bang Theory.
A Bear By Any Other Name
The two-year-old howled, the truck went flying, the coffee went spilling, the mom did some swearing as she went for yet another towel. The Cinder turned his attention from Terraria (the video game obsession of the moment) and fixed a solemn gaze on me.
“You were asking for it, you know,” he said. “I mean, you did nickname him Bear. Bear? That’s what he is. A very, very good bear.”
The Bear bared his fangs, growled, and rushed at Cinder, headbutting him in the belly.
“You’re right,” I said. “We should have nicknamed him Fluffy.”
“Well, it could have been worse,” Cinder groaned, removing Ender’s head from his gut. “You could have called him Cthulhu.”
Death By Flatulence (A Sad Story)
…or, unschooling reading and writing with a boy-boy
Austen and I were typing dorky notes to each other in Word. I typed a sentence and he read–then he changed the sentence and I read it. For example, I wrote, “Austen is not a gas bag.” And he changed it to (what else?), “Mom is a gas bag.” And on it went until we wrote this story. Austen’s debut in literature, world take note.
A SAD STORY
by austen and Mom
One day, a boy did a bad thing. He made a big fart. It blew his head off.
His head was not big. His head was not small. His head was gone.
He was sad.
Actually, he was dead.
All because of a big fart.
The end.
Nothing By The Book 