Big Families

I have been very fortunate in that I haven't really had to deal with people making nasty comments about my numerous offspring.  The worst I've had is the occasional comment on how my home is too small, which I'm doing my best (and, evidently failing) to ignore.  I've heard enough stories from friends who were on the receiving end of others' rude diatribes that I actually have a response all ready in my head ("You should probably thank me, since my kids will probably be paying your social security some day").

But really what I wish I could do is just show them this video:



Yeah, having more kids equals a lot (and sometimes a lot less) of things: more chaos, more mess, less money, more crowded house, more stress.  Probably more grey hairs for me.  Certainly more inches around my middle.  But it also equals more love.

Every. Single. Time.

And what isn't worth that?

The Official Guess Right Now

I had my second doctor's appointment last week, and because my doctor is fun, she went ahead and did another ultrasound.  We examined that baby very closely.  We looked at the umbilical cord.  We counted toes.  We watched as arms waved around.  We could even see this poor little baby's bum crack (as the doctor so tactfully put it).  What we did not manage to see were any boy parts.

Now, it's still early (that was at 13 weeks), so it's entirely possible that this will turn out to be wrong.  But for the time being, I'm getting pretty excited to be having another little girl!

The fun thing, here, is that I actually like both baby girls AND baby boys.  So it was pretty much a win-win situation no matter what we found out.  Sometimes I think we need some sort of third gender that would be the loser gender so when you found out you weren't having that one, you could be super relieved.  But actually that would totally suck, so I guess the system we have is just fine.

The person who is bouncing off the walls excited about all this is Kendra.  It's about time she got a little sister to keep her company!

"The limit does not exist!" -from Mean Girls

~or~

Why I Hate Video Games

~or~

Why Parenting Can Be Really Difficult and What Works for One Kid Might Not Work for Another

~or~

Please Don't Judge Me

So.  Video games.  They're not exactly a new thing.  In fact, I'm pretty sure they got started when I was a kid, about forty years ago.  Granted, they've come a long way since then.  I actually remember that we had one of those "table tennis" ping pong games on some sort of computer, which I think was the very first "video game" ever.  We moved on to a Texas Instruments that had such awesome games as Hunt the Wumpus (featuring the music, "In the Hall of the Mountain King"-- the only song I can kind of play on the piano), Parsec and Alpine ("You forgot to duck" remains a favorite phrase amongst me and my sisters).  We also had some sort of poker game which my Mom was constantly hiding from us and claiming that it was simply "missing."  Smart move, Mom, smart move.

Later on, we graduated to a Gameboy.  We loved playing Tetris on it-- who didn't?-- and had a couple Super Mario Brothers games...  But that was about it.  We'd go through phases where we would play those games obsessively, and then we'd get bored and do something else.  And that was about it.  There just wasn't that much to do with these games.

I never got into the REAL games.  Final Fantasy and Halo and all that-- games that suck you in and have you playing with people on-line.  I had friends who played them, and I remember once listening to the checker at a grocery store explaining to me that her on-line Final Fantasy friends were her REAL FRIENDS (with a "goshdarnit" at the end sort of implied), but I just never bothered with any of those.  For one thing, I know my obsessive personality well enough to know that if I let myself get pulled into these, there was probably no stopping.  For another thing, I was busy enough in college without adding such a huge time-suck into my life.  And probably most of all, I figured out that games aren't really my thing.  

Don't get me wrong-- I see nothing wrong with a game of Clue or whatever.  But I'd rather sit and chat with a person than play a game with them any day.  It's just how I roll.

So that was that.

But then I also observed people who fell down the gaming hole.  The guy whose girlfriend broke up with him because he would rather play video games than be with her.  A friend who claimed that people always came first for him, and then sat ignoring me so he could play Spider-Man.  And the numerous boys who ultimately dropped out of BYU because they chose video games over attending class (let alone doing any of the work).  And I started to feel that video games weren't just a hobby I didn't want to participate in them, there was something pernicious about them.

The more I witnessed, the more video games seemed to be on a par with pornography to me.  Now, I lost some of you right there.  That's a big jump to make, I know, but hear me out.  I think that anything, anything, that makes real life seem boring in comparison (and that's exactly what porn does for real-life sex), isn't healthy for you.  

Because let's face it-- real life is amazing.  Nature alone is pretty kick-a awesome, and scientists are always discovering new wonderful things.  But even real life must have a hard time competing with wizards and dragons and magic and girls with eyes the size of tennis balls who never complain and whatever else you can make up and animate for a video game.*

So yeah, I don't like video games.

And I was fortunate enough to find Craig, who also doesn't like video games.  (I've talked to plenty of friends who wish they could drag their husbands away from the computer and get them involved in family life a little more.  I'm very thankful I don't have this problem with Craig.)  So it wasn't an issue for us at all. 

Until Bentley came along and got old enough to become interested in it all.  And suddenly I find myself trying to navigate all the same gaming questions as a parent making decisions for someone with their own opinions, and not just for myself.  And trying to figure it all out for a kid who sees all the other kids playing video games and talking about them and can't understand why his mom has made a blanket decision that she hates all video games.  And suddenly it began to feel very complicated.

And it's even more complicated because of who Bentley is.  I've read parenting stuff and they all say the same thing: the key is to set limits.  Kids need to learn how to navigate this stuff with their parents' help.  Kids need exposure without letting them drown in it.  Kids need to gradually learn how to set their own limits, under their parents' guidance.

And I believe that.  I think it makes a lot of sense.  But when we try to do this with Bentley it fails miserably.  I've tried to say, "You get X amount of time on the iPad, and then that's it for the day" or whatever.  But no matter how much I explain the rules and enforce them, what happens is that when the time is up, Bentley is screaming at me because he wants more.  (This does nothing to make me appreciate whatever it is that kids are supposed to be "learning" from being allowed to play in the first place.)  And after a summer of trying to make this work, culminating in Bentley freaking out unable to sleep at night because he was scared of zombies (thank you, Minecraft, for that), we finally pulled the plug on anything that had zombies in it.  And as soon as our drive home was completed, we put away the iPad and the kids have not seen it since.

Because for Bentley, it seems that any of this is too much.  He can't handle the freedom, and he can't handle being told to stop.  It wasn't working.

As I've been typing this, he's been out in the backyard digging a hole.  His own real-life version of Minecraft (minus the diamonds, zombies, etc.).  And he's happy right now and I don't feel like he's ruining his brain.  And when he's done he can come inside and I don't have to try to get him to stop or have him be sneaky about not stopping or have him yelling at me that I'm a mean mommy for making him stop...  And while we've certainly had our fair share of run-ins about other things, it's a relief to at least not have to be stressing about video games, too.

So that's where we are for now.  Maybe at some point this will change.  Maybe all those parenting advice things are aimed at older children and Bentley's just too young for this.  But I know for now that we've tried and it didn't work, so we are cutting out the games for a bit.

And I'm okay with that

*Now, by the same argument, you could probably claim that I should stop reading Harry Potter.  But the difference is that you read the novel, actively engage your mind, and then when you finish you close the book and go back to real life.  It doesn't lead to quite the same addictive behavior that many games purposely employ.  So there is a difference.

Dazed and Confused

So it's almost been a month since I posted anything.  (That last one doesn't count, since I didn't write it.  Although I did upload all the photos for Craig.  You're welcome.)  And I have a bunch of things to tell you about-- people visiting us and us visiting people and stuff we did with those people.  But somehow I'm having a hard time focusing enough to upload the pictures necessary, so it just isn't happening yet. 

Blame it on the pregnancy.  Blame it on Craig being home, doing projects around the house and leaving me stuck taking care of the kids (and I can't even be annoyed because he's accomplishing stuff I would never bother doing in a million years, like cleaning out the crawl space).  Blame it on the fact that Craig and I are incapable of going to bed at a decent hour, and Ryder is back to waking up at 6:30.  Blame it on the kids all being home and Craig just went back to work yesterday even though school doesn't start for nearly two more weeks...  But whatever is going on, what's not going on is my brain working very much.  Each day passes in a fog of me trying to not let the kids watch too much TV.

So here's what I have accomplished (not because I think you'll find this terribly interesting, but because I want to feel better about myself): I used my new food dehydrator for the first time!  I did peach and apple slices and dehydrated applesauce to make fruit leather.  Pretty awesome!  I made Bentley and Kendra try on all their clothes so we could figure out what they had outgrown and what we needed to buy before school started.  I boxed up all Kendra's outgrown clothes and moved Bentley's outgrown clothes to Ryder's side of the closet.  I even took them each back-to-school shopping (which is a big accomplishment if you hate shopping as much as I do).  And last week I made entirely healthy meals for dinner, which we are still trying to choke down because no one wants to eat the leftovers of healthy meals (self included).  (And this is why I sort of hate trying to eat healthy, but we're trying to undo the extensive damage we did to our collective BMIs while traveling.) 

So there.  I'm not completely lazy.  I won't tell you how many days those tasks were all stretched out across.  Maybe it will seem more impressive if you don't know. 

I'll shake myself out of this fog soon.

Really, I will.

Scout Camp

Long time reader - second time poster, Craig here.  Alanna insists that I write the post about Bentley's cub scout camp.  Somehow she thinks that just because she didn't go, that she's not qualified to write about it.

Here's Bentley all set up in his new tent.  He was in there with his friend Peter and two other boys. 

At the dining hall for breakfast.  We were there Thursday night to Saturday night. 

 

This was our first attempt at fishing.  We were there about ten minutes and didn't catch anything which led to Bentley concluding that he hated fishing

The theme this year was "Space," so this was astronaut training.  You didn't know astronauts lived in Teepees, did you?

Working on a square knot.

 

Shooting BB guns.  Bentley liked to tell the story about the crazy range master who rested his chin on the muzzle of a gun while he lectured the boys on gun safety. Nice.

 

Not bad for a first-timer.

Building a model spaceship.

 

This was actually pretty cool.  It's called a solar tube-- basically a giant black trash bag.  They filled it up with air and the sunlight heats it up until it starts to take off.  The tall orange guy in the middle is Stan-- he was everyone's favorite counselor mostly because he was completely crazy.  The boys almost started a revolt when he wasn't at the Saturday night camp fire.

Mr. Fleisig leads the way to dinner.

I guess the mess hall food wasn't too bad, since I seem to be filling out my uniform quite nicely.

Bentley and Peter loved the boating.  That was always their first choice during free time.  The lake was two thirds covered in lily pads.

We also tried a paddle boat.

Sling shots were a little tricky to get the hang of.

You can't tell in the picture, but I'm pretty sure that moon was actually about 50% bigger than normal.

 

I have to hand it to Camp Snyder.  They know their target audience.  Get a big pile of sand and throw some gem stones in it.  This will keep seven-year-olds busy for about six months.  Bentley has been dreaming of this moment ever since he first tried Mine Craft.

Everyone was a little tired by the second day.  I think the look on his face here sums that up.

He actually did pretty well at archery.

Building a model rocket.  I managed to get him to make a face other than "grumpy" for the picture.

Our second attempt at fishing.  After a huge meltdown and Bentley insisting that fishing was boring and he was not good at it, I convinced him to try once more.  He pulled out a fish in about ten seconds.  After that he was basically ready to drop out of school and sign up for "Deadliest Catch."

Bentley and Peter.  Still best buds.

We had a pretty awesome time.