New me eating new stuff

Its been a while.

2012 was a banner year for the Biggs's, with our oldest, the Daughter, going off to college, the Middle One getting a full time summer job and the Youngest, Vladmeir Baxdendalle, disappearing off into the neighborhood with his friends before the start of high school. We also added a new member of our household, at least part-time, when Penelope's friend moved in with us over the summer before she went off to college too. I always thought there would be a gradual tapering off of neediness by my kids but what happened instead was they all walked out the door at once (and of course left it wide open for all of the dirt to blow in).

The cats seem to be the only ones who depend on me anymore, since I remember to buy the cat food (most of the time).

Don't worry, we're all still incredibly lazy, we're just spread out more.

Herself, at school

When Penelope left, I became a bit obsessed with what she must be doing 3000 miles away. Fortunately or unfortunately we live in a modern world which makes it possible to stalk your kids quite easily, but something just wasn't right about me constantly checking to see if she was on Gmail, looking for her to post on Facebook, and stalking her Tumblr blog. That last one felt like the ultimate invasion of privacy, even though, you know, she put it on the INTERNET. Cause she didn't put it on the internet for her mom to see.

It was a bit of a rough time for me, not knowing what she was up to and not being able to do anything about it anyway. She's not a big communicator, so there wasn't a lot of calling home (there was actually NO calling home. She called me on Thanksgiving because my sister who was hosting her for the holiday suggested she should, and she called me on my birthday.) I told myself no news was good news but if I was going to keep my sanity I needed to find some other way to spend my time besides internet stalking my oldest.

So I started making myself do 5 push-ups every time I found myself pulled towards her online profiles. Soon, 5 push-ups seemed kind of easy. Sometimes I went ahead and did 10. I still wondered what she was up to, but started to navigate to healthy eating websites, instead of to her Facebook page (which she rarely posted to anyway). I started to play on Pinterest and see healthy recipes that looked really appealing.

I decided I'd let go of what was beyond my control and focus on what I could control. For me that boiled down to getting healthy. With the girls safely tucked away at college (I had to assume) and the boys roaming the city with their own lives to lead, I decided to fix my attention on my weight, which had gotten all out of control, and my fitness level, which was unimpressive to say the least.

I don't have many pictures of myself from "before", since I wisely avoided the camera. I was 5' 4', about 200 pounds (I had not been on a scale for a long time), and actually not in too poor shape since I was at least playing soccer a couple of times a week. But on the soccer field I was slowwwwwww, and my clothes were really uncomfortable. I didn't feel good about my body or my looks and was generally -- how do they say it-- letting myself go. When you're over 40 and you start to let yourself go, you go quickly!

Shortly after I got back from the college drop-off, my friend from work, Corie, told me about an app she was using called My Fitness Pal. It helped keep track of what I was eating and how much exercise I was getting. Corie also whipped me into shape in terms of my wardrobe. She is always impeccably dressed and coiffed and made up and she raised the bar on me. We started encouraging each other and became "get fit" buddies. We never called it weight loss, since we were looking for a healthy life transformation, not a quick diet.

This is me at my niece's wedding in October, about 6 weeks into my efforts. 

So that this isn't a million pages long I will stop here (also, Game of Thrones just started) and talk next time about how and what progress has been made. And what the kids think. Or if they have even noticed.

Big Time Robot Invasion

Couple of BIG weeks coming up for folks involved in FIRST Robotics.

FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Its a national organization dedicated to inspiring kids to pursue studies in science and technology. They run different robotics competitions for kids as young as six, all the way to age 18. Benson Robotics, Penelpe's club, participates in two of these programs, FTC and FRC. Both programs have very important events coming up in the next few weeks which are the culmination of months, and weeks of work.




FIRST Tech Challenge(FTC)State Competition:

February 28, 2010 State Championship at South Meadows Middle School
4690 Southeast Davis Road
Hillsboro, Oregon

Opening Ceremony at 11:30 am
Competition starts at noon
Award Ceremony at approx. 4:30pm

Here is Penelope's team's robot, named Mo(bius).



The State Championship, organized by Oregon Robotics Tournament and Outreach (ORTOP) and presented by Rockwell Collins, will showcase the winning teams from this month's qualifying tournaments at OMSI and OSU (pictures). Benson Robotics Club is sending 2 teams to the competition. They are extremely excited that both teams advanced. The 24 teams who have made it this far have already been through more ups and downs (and soda and candy)in the last month than most of us experience in a year at our work.

Teams and mentors have been working hours and hours after school every week to fine tune (they are engineers, so their robots are never actually DONE) their machines, their codes, and their team cheers.



Competition rounds start at noon. Winners will advance to the National Competition in Atlanta. This is serious fun.

MEANWHILE,
The same kids who have been working on their FTC robots (above), have, for the last 6weeks, also been frantically building FIRST Robotics Competiion (FRC) robots, to compete March 4-6 in the Western Regionals at the Memorial Coliseum. Not a lot of sleep occurs for kids competing in robotics during the months of January and February.

For the FRC robots, they are given a kit of parts, a challenge (this year's involves soccer balls and hanging robots) and 6-weeks to design, build and code their 'bot. Today (Feb 23)was the day all teams had to ship their robots to the competition site in a custom-made wooden crate (which they also had to make) which is also designed to function as the team's work bench once they are unpacked.

This is the rock-and-roll event of robotics competitions. It is a huge party with teams from all over the west, including Alaska and Hawaii. Temas have a great time trying to outdo each other in costumes and team spirit, but an atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration prevails, as the participants are urged to consider the event a "coopertition", a combination of cooperation and competition.

Mom Comments:
I have never seen an activity that was more inspiring for the participants then FIRST Robotics. Kids who participate get real problem solving experience, they are do not fear failure because they fail 10 times for every success and learn twice as much everytime something doesn't work out. They meet and work with industry professionals, use real tools and programs, are treated with respect and in turn learn to treat all teams with respect.



They go out of their way to help each other; even right up until the moment of competition they will help a competitor because they have learned that the better your competition, the better your own performance.

Another great component of FIRST Robotics is the outstanding mentors from the community. Benson Mentors are John Delacy, a retired Techtronix engineer (he scored the team a cool oscilliscope to play with--yeah, this is a crowd that gets very excited about a new oscilliscope), Jeff McBride, a computer engineer at Web MD, and Oliver (whose last name I'm afraid I never learned!)an engineer from Boeing. Jeff, John and Oliver along with other great parents and teachers--Liz, Amy, Mr Pellico, Sally and Susan--have contributed countless hours in support of the team.

My daughter has visited Boeing, Intel, Tectronix, WEb MD and Autodesk and met industry professionals from numerous other tech companies, big and small, local and international. She has learned to talk with adults with much greater ease by promoting something that she is passionate about. Nothing about this work seems like work (except the fundraising . . .)

I know everyone has a million things to do so instead of pleading with everyone to come to the events, I at least wanted to share with you what they are all about.

Not really very funny homework manifesto

Here are excerpts from the homework manifesto that I sent to V's teacher who was worried that he is not doing his homework or class work:

Thank you so much for the note, Mrs. G. Please forgive the length of this email. The topic is one that I am passionate about.

I really appreciate you taking the time to contact us when you have so many kids in your classroom . With regard to your concerns, I would like to provide some context to help you understand our family's approach to school. I also would like to work with you on how you can better engage V in the classroom.

Our family is just a little bit different and I want you to know that.

Vic comes from a line of stubborn contrarians. Never in our lives has a family member done what anyone has asked us to do (okay, we suffer a bit from hyperbole too). Homework is a classic example of how other people's good intentions absolutely do not work on the Bowen-Biggs clan. The only things that works for us is for us to find our passion and vigorously pursue it. Its amazing how this translates in school, once the connection has been made.

V is the third of my children who has never been forced to do homework. Let me tell you about his brother and sister and perhaps you will understand a bit better how we roll.

V's sister sailed through elementary and middle school without doing a lick of work. Social promotion and her ability to ace any test helped her end up in high school on time. She did not do homework, she did not complete classroom assignments, she did not turn in projects -- unless they interested her. Her eighth grade teacher despaired of P ever completing her freshman year, much less high school. She finished with mediocre or poor grades in all subjects, save for math. I tried to get P to do homework later on in her middle-school career but it made us both so miserable that I signed her up for Karate instead.

With that in mind, I'll admit that I was worried how she would do in high school. I'm happy to report [blah blah blah boring braggy mom stuff . . . ]

P discovered that she had a passion for science and math and that completing her homework actually made her more interested in the subjects. She discovered that the more work she did the more she engaged. P's internal motivation is to learn absolutely as much as possible and tapping into that has made it easier for her to complete any assignments that come her way. She has not had any trouble doing homework in her first year and then-some in high school. The karate class helped too, since it helped her with concentration and taught her discipline and self control.

V's brother is an 8th grader at Beaumont. He has never been a "good student" either, nor did he do any homework in elementary school, 6th or 7th grade. In third grade he didn't hand in a single homework assignment although he did complete every extra credit project that was offered. In 7th grade, K discovered that he had a passion for sports. He also learned that if he wants to play sports in high school he needs to maintain a certain grade average. As an 8th grader, his internal motivation is to learn how to do homework--just like he learns how to do a lay-up or how to kick a corner-kick--so that he can participate in sports. He diligently completes his assignments every night without my prompting and with out complaining. His grades are not perfect but they are acceptable. In addition to sports, he also does art and sculpture in his spare time. He is happy and thats all that I need.

I have stuck to my guns throughout both of my older chidren's education and I'm happy and relieved that it panned out (I have spent plenty of time worrying that it wouldn't). The general pattern is that we try and discover each child's passion and help them tap into their internal motivation to pursue it.

Unfortunately, at this point, V's passion appears to be sitting on the couch and watching tv. He does have other interests, including soccer, drawing, old-school role-playing games and inventing. He also has a certain skill that is a double-edged sword: he can get anybody to do anything for him. (I keep telling him he will be a great project-manager when he grows up.)

We have not yet identified what his passion is or where he derives internal motivation. I'm stumped with him. If I get on his back to do homework (which I have been trying to do, just to see if it works) we both end up miserable and mad at each other. He doesn't learn anything and it takes us an hour and a half to do work that really only takes him 15 minutes to complete. At the end of that hour we are both cranky and our evening is ruined. I am not willing to give our family time over to this battle. We do have a great time coming up with fake entries for his reading log and writing silly stories with his vocabulary words.

What I want for V at this point is for him to advance with his class through middle school. I also want him to work hard at the things he is good at, like math. I want him to find his passion and to find the internal motivation that will convince him that it pays off to work hard. No amount of repeating that refrain will make him believe it until he stumbles upon it on his own.

I don't know what to do about the research that he is not doing. Choosing a subject to report on is an excruciating exercise that usually ends up with him hating his topic. So many of the traditional assignments are like torture for him--science fair projects, history reports, book reports, worksheets . . . all of these require following specific directions, filling in templates, and leave little room for creativity. He comes by it honestly--my personal passion when I was in school was to do everything exactly opposite of what was required (I know, you're shocked--ha!ha!). When teachers show me the forms that kids are supposed to fill out in the process of completing their portfolio writing assignments it makes me so crazy I can barely stay in my seat. And V is a lot like me.

I have a very hard time lying to him and telling him that I believe homework is important. What is important is cultivating a love of learning. What is important is finding out how you best express yourself. What is important is wanting to do more, not because someone tells you you have to, but because you feel compelled to follow your passion.

That having been said, I also know that teachers need something to measure performance by, that you need to know if a child is progressing. I also know that you need to reward the kids who do their work diligently and on time. It does not bother me that V will get poor grades for not completing homework assignments. This is something I feel that I have to state explicitly to his teachers.

I welcome your thoughts on how we move forward in our shared goal of keeping V engaged in the classroom. [blah blah more boring stuff about what I will make him do and what I hope she can make him do. . . ]

Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex (Education)

Kids in Portland Schools participate in a program called S.T.A.R.S.

When P was in middle school S.T.A.R.S. stood for "Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex". Cool hipster volunteers came to the school to talk about, well. . . you know. . . to go over all those things that us lazy parents count on other people, namely teachers or FOX TV, to explain.

At the end of the lessons, the sixth graders were given pencils that had the full program name printed on them: Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex. The first thing the students did, of course, was to sharpen them all the way down so they just said "Sex". Proving the point pretty well, I'd say.

In high school, S.T.A.R.S. now stands for "Students Talking About Responsible Sexuality". In my dreams, the "talking" part would stay at school but MY kids have to bring it all home.

Yesterday P came home and said: "We talked about the male and female reporductive systems in Health. I was the only girl in the class today, so they focused mostly on the boys. We talked for like 15 minutes about how guys are supposed to give themselves self-exams."

Then, because he's big on fairness, K says "Did they talk about your vagina too?" (Trust me, those are words no mother needs to hear coming from her 13 year old son. About her daughter's va-hee-na.)

"No, we didn't get there. The bell rang."

Figures. Here is another story told by P.:

"So today in S.T.A.R.S. we did a role playing game. . ."

Let me interject here to tell you that to P, a "role playing game" is Dungeons and Dragons, so that's what she was thinking when. . .

"The teacher told us to pick a character so we could practice making responsible sexual decisions. . ."

Now, since P is usally the Dungeon Master in D&D, she didn't have her own "player character" in mind. So she borrowed K's favorite player: a 300 pound, 100 year old 3ft tall dwarf named Bud.



"We rolled dice to see what kinds of decisions our characters had to make. Well, unfortunately Bud made some bad sexual choices. He got a 17-year-old girl pregnant having unprotected sex. And he got Chlamydia."

K was pretty upset that she let that happen to Bud. P was pretty upset that the game didn't allow players to roll hit points or cast spells.

I know people have good stories about embarssing questions, ackward moments and responsible or irresponsible sexual choices. Dungeons and Dragon stories are okay too. Lets hear what you've got.

WTF? (contains adult language. . .)

My friend DK posted a status update on Facebook about her son going to the Principal's office for saying the F-word. People shared lots of great stories about kids in trouble for swearing. I told the one about the time P said "shit" (twice) into a microphone to a room full of 300 people including my future boss and the Mayor of Portland.


Here is P with Mayor Potter on another occasion when she managed NOT to shout out obscenities.

And here is one (more) of my stories about swearing.

When V was in preschool he had a little problem with the potty mouth--that is, he swore like a sailor.

I was stumped as to what to do about it when we saw the Simpsons episode where Homer builds a dog house and Ned Flanders catches him swearing. I believe I've mentioned before that the only parenting techniques my kids buy into are ones they've seen on the Simpsons. Homer bets his neighbor that if he can stop swearing, Ned will shave his mustache. So Marge makes Homer a "Swear Jar" and charges him a quarter a curse. Highlights here: http://tinyurl.com/ow4aqg

P thought this seemed like a good idea but we were stumped by the question "what constitutes a swear word?" We happened to be listening to lots of Spearhead at the time and one of our favorite songs was "Love is Da Shit That Makes Life Bloom". Hello Mother of Mixed Messages!

We had a good discussion about artistic license and decided that we needed to establish some kind of a guide for what was a swear word. While we were at it the kids thought it would be helpful to add some alternatives and also point out any exceptions.

Then began one of my favorite listening sessions. The kids were about 4,6 and 8. V was the expert so the other two kept asking him, "Okay, whats another swear word" and he'd rattle off another word he knew he wasn't supposed to say. I helped them set up a chart on the computer but left it up to them to fill it out. I answered questions like "Mom how do you spell Bastard?", "Is a Bitch a boy or a girl dog?" "Is it okay to say Shit when you are pooping?"

I've done a pretty poor job of recreating it here (the original was much longer and had wonderful misspellings):



But you get the idea. And by the way, after they went through the exercise, they pretty much stopped swearing. I got the most quarters from Charlie who sometimes would swear just so they would catch him at it. I think we collected enough to buy a carton of Ben and Jerry's before it became just a favorite relic.

Lets hear your great swear stories--I'm hereby exercising my artistic license to encourage you all to swear in these posts!

This might be boring -- but that's okay!

My mom has a saying, a bored person is a boring person and when I was growing up, boy did I take that seriously. I spent a lot of time afraid that I might be bored -- which would lead to something even worse: I might be boring. I was pretty desperate to keep myself entertained or entertaining at all times. It turned out to be a good thing in the end because I was easily entertained, always a cheap date and didn't require much upkeep, but the attitude did leave me a little twitchy in the duller moments of my childhood.

I passed this same attitude along to my children for a number of years. It seemed like a pretty good plan. Then, when I was a preschool teacher, I had the good fortune of taking a seminar from a wonderful woman named Bev Bos. I won't go into too much detail here about Bev, but trust me, she's one of the most inspirational speakers you will ever have the pleasure to hear. She is the teacher and director of Roseville Community School in Roseville CA and lucky for us, she also lectures all over the country talking about early childhood education.

One of the things she talked about that has really stuck with me is that boredom is a developmental phase all kids must experience. Kids need to learn how to be bored. Boredom is not bad, its an opportunity to find something else to do! She gave us a wonderful phrase to take back to our preschools (and homes) to use the next time a child came up to say "I'm bored".

"You're bored? That's GREAT! Now you get to decide what to do next!"

The first time I said that to my kids (instead of a bored person is a boring person) they looked at me like I was crazy. Then they waited for my customary list of ideas. I didn't give them any.

"What should I do?"
"I don't know."

It took a while for the kids to realize they were going to be largely on their own to work through this "developmental phase". Well, not so much on their own. They did have each other.

The following is a short list of things the kids have come up with on their own while they were "deciding what to do next". Lucky for me, they often took pictures while I sat back and ate bon bons.

Send me examples of what your kids get up to when they are bored (or you get up to, for that matter)

Superheroes:



Home Office:

United States of Pillows (only made it through the west coast)

Starburst wrapper hat:

Jump over stuff on your bike:

And of course, jump over brother on your bike:

Angry Letter #1

"Penelope I'm very upset with your muchereti [maturity] level, I exspect more. . .so get your own darn chair.
This picture of you is showing how upset with you [sic]"