Shopping now kind of .... sucks

After a long day at work or at home, one of my joys and rewards to myself (for not strangling my child or my students) was going shopping.  Without a list or any particular need or reason why I am there, I just enjoy strolling up and down the aisles of handbags, shoes, jeans, tops, cookwear, blankets, and toys.  I stay there for hours. John knows that when I go shopping, not to worry, because I am safe and sound in the store.

After the major purge I went through this year, I still get the urge to shop.  I still indulge in the wandering and aimless strolling through the various departments.  I still really enjoy it because I am a visual person who gets stimulated by color and texture and designs on jackets and buckles and jewelry.  I get my fix looking at the stuff. I also get tempted to bring home lots of stuff....Hey, it's on "sale," right?  But before I get to the register, I remember that the items in my hands look eerily similar to the items I donated recently. Didn't I just donate something like this (fill in the blank) recently?

That's when I turn around and put the items back.  Don't get me wrong, I still want the stuff.  I still desire the new and bling-y thing I just found.   But the voice in my head reminds me that I don't need that new thing, and that I have just unburdened my home of some stuff that looks A LOT like the stuff I'm about  to buy. 

This has kind of, sort of taken that shopping-induced-temporary-high AWAY.  I find it ironic that letting go of a lot of my belongings would cause this other part of my behavior to change as well.  Reducing my stuff caused me to avoid buying MORE stuff.  What a strange consequence!  I would expect the opposite to happen.  I would expect to be tempted to buy more as a result of feeling deprived or sad to have given stuff away.  But I don't feel deprived or sad.  In fact, I feel light and free and cheerful when I see the space that opened up from removing items from our home. 

Now the biggest shopping season is here. I'm sure I will be tempted to buy a gift for me while shopping for friends and family.  But if this new phenomenon continues, and I may end up avoiding the department stores all together.  I hope my family will like the gift cards or cash they get instead.  We'll see.

Where's my wife?

"Mom, I have a wife now."

These are not words you expect to hear from your 7-year old son.  I was quiet.  Maybe I heard wrong.

"Mommmmm! I have a wife now."  I turned around to see what Lucas could possibly be talking about.  He acquired a wife on his favorite game: Minecraft.  This game is interesting because you get to use blocks (like Legos) to build a home, a city, and community, hunt for food, mine for coal, chop wood for building, craft an axe or sword for hunting... etc.  Lucas has been playing it for some time now, but this is a new development.

"I have a wife," he repeated to his Dad this time.  "Me too!"  was John's response.

"I will have a home set so me and my wife can have a home," Lucas exclaimed.  I thought: Ah, good! Making sure he provides a good home for her.  By the way, this is what she looks like.  Cute, right?

Then suddenly the game crashed.  I think what happened was the modification to the game that allowed him to have a wife caused the game to stop working.  Nevertheless, it crashed.

This happens to this game sometimes.  "I need another wife," Lucas said casually. 

John's attention was now on Lucas and the crashed game.  "What happened to your wife?" John asked, amused.

"I can't find her.  Where's my wife?"  Lucas re-started the game. 

"See what happens when you get a wife?"  John said to Lucas, making sure I could hear him loud and clear.  I could sense John smiling way over there across the  room.  "Very funny," I responded.

Divorce aftermath

I did another drop to Goodwill yesterday:  One large bag of clothes and a bag of shoes.  I had trouble letting the shoes go, though.  I took them out of their donation bag, tried them on, and thought about what outfits would go well with them.  "No," I told myself.  "You can let these go." I returned the shoes to the donation bag. Then I felt a shot of pain from my unsupported arches... there goes that insecurity again. My fear of letting go is still with me.  I was feeling so elevated and enlightened by my release of so much stuff.  But the shoes seems to be my trouble spot. 

What struck me the most from my purge of stuff was the unbelievable number of bags I have  ALREADY donated.  But still, I have a hard time fitting all my belongings into my closet.  How is that possible?  I haven't shopped since the summer... (for my new job).  John teases me when he sees my closet because I have all my shirts and pants lined up and stacked neatly.  But there isn't much room for extras.  In fact, when I pull out a shirt or a pair of sweatpants from the stack, I have to make sure the whole thing doesn't come down as well.  That's a sign that there is still too much in there.  

This process begins a conversation in my head. I ask myself questions like, "Why does it matter that I clear some of these clothes? " Or why spend all this time clearing out the old video cassette tapes?" We'll, I am staring to believe that the more things surround me, the more those things compete for my attention. One example is when I had three sets of dishes in my kitchen. Yes, I said three. There are four people in my family. Realistically we use four plates, four cups, and four sets of utensils. We are able to wash anything when we finish using it.  But before I donated my kitchen stuff, I had enough dishes and accessories to feed eighteen people. Maybe that was source of security for me..."hey, if eighteen people suddenly show up, I can feed all of them at the same time.  But you know what happened? My little family would just pull out dish after dish and cup after cup until the dishes piled so high that we could get anything under the faucet anymore. Maybe that is more of a statement about my family's habits in the kitchen rather than on minimalizing kitchen stuff. But it was amazing when after I cut down the dishes to a maximum of seven plates, five cups, and eight eating utensils, the dishes never, never piled up!  Now how did that happen?

"But what if I miss the item I just donated?" I have asked myself more than once. The amazing thing is... I haven't yet missed one single item I got rid of.  Not one. Even my wedding gown that I donated last month...I don't miss it.  Don't get me wrong, I loved it and I remember my Lola every time I think of it, but I do not wish I had the gown back. I didn't use it, I will never use it, and I didn't see it everyday.

I am happier with more space and less clutter taking up my attention.   Even though the stuff is nonliving and inanimate, it takes up precious space in my room, in my schedule (to move, organize, or clean), and in my mind.  Removing the item not needed frees up that physical space as well as the space in my head.  It's a feeling I am growing to enjoy. 

I have been doing some research online to see what strategies are out there for someone looking to minimalize.  Should I keep enough clothes for only one laundry load?  Should I keep the clothes to a maximum number of, say, 50 items?  There's a lot of advice out there.  And a lot of it is very good.

Tammy Stoebel wrote a few books on "going small" and her blog Rowdy Kittens is one that I frequent.  She and her husband now live in a tiny house in Northern California.

Another blog I just love is The Minimalists.  These two guys had six-figure incomes and nice "stuff" that you would think would make anyone content and happy.  But they found out that money and stuff is not enough. 

Divorce

My wardrobe is shrinking.  I have 2 more bags going to Goodwill.  I have been reading about people who started embracing minimalism after a death in the family or after a divorce.

I feel like I'm getting divorced...not from my marriage. From my excess stuff.  (John is a good guy!)

I am divorcing QVC (*gasp!) 

I am divorcing my purse collection.  Do you know that I use only 3 purses in my 25-plus purse collection?  Ask any woman.  I bet they also use about 10 percent of their purses.  The rest of my purses just stay in their closet.  I have the privilege of moving them around and admiring them when I have to make space for more stuff, but for the most part, they are not practical or they are too heavy or too small to hold school papers, etc. 

Those purses were like a security blanket for me.  I wanted to make sure that I had the right-sized-cute-purse for any occasion.  I only need 3 purses:  Small, medium and large.  So I got divorced from my purse collection.

I have already divorced my cable TV.  I still watch Netflix and Hulu, but not everyday.  If I'm lucky I will catch something on the weekends, but most likely I am knitting, reading, or keeping the Lucas entertained. 

I divorced my wedding gown.  Yes, my most prized possession I have been hanging on to for 22 years.  I had hoped to have a daughter to pass it down to.  Or I hoped a friend or loved one would use it.  Or better yet, a granddaughter.... then I stopped... Really?  I will wait until I have a granddaughter?  And so I opened the box that contained my gown, admired it one last time, took photos of the lace detail, and remembered my Lola Luz for all the beautiful handwork she did.  I don't need the gown to remember my Lola forever.  She is in my heart. 

I will be divorcing my shoe collection.  Did you know I had 3 shoes for water sports?  3.  I don't do water sports that much, but for some reason I felt the need for 3 shoes to fit that occassion.  Now I am not a fan of high heels so I don't have those types of shoes.  What I do have in dozens of ... get this... orthopedic shoes!  I had plantar fasciitis for two painful years and could not wear anything without a serious arch support.  I also had to ice, stretch, and tape up my feet daily.  I shopped and shopped for good arch-supportive shoes, maybe, in order to ward off any more bouts of plantar fasciitis.  I just bought a pair last week...didn't need it!

But really that was very odd behavior.  I could totally live with, say, 5 pairs of well-made, durable shoes that are appropriate for work, play, weekends.   That will be more difficult.  I have insecurities about having foot pain again.  It nearly put me out of work.  But a mountain of shoes will not save me.  Vigilance and awareness of my body will keep me from a relapse...not all those shoes.

This leads me to think that a lot of my stuff was for "just in case" and for security.  But it's silly to look to our stuff for security.  Isn't it?

I'm on a roll.  Goodwill: here I come!

Why Now?

Looking back to my previous post, I commented that I was sad about the Hi-8 video of Ian degrading.  Analog videos are known to degrade over time.  The video I was watching was about 19 years old.  Ian is now 22.  It needed to be preserved.  There are about 20 cassettes just like it that my father-in-law left us. 

You might ask, "Why are you just taking care of these old videos now, Karina?"

For the same reason I have neglected a lot of things in my life.  There's just too much on my I'll-get-to-that-later  list.  Here are a few more items on that list that I have yet to tackle.

• organize my recipes
• add some healthy, possibly meat-free recipes to my collection
• shred my taxes from 2001 and beyond (I think I only need the last 3 years, right?)
• photograph ALL Lucas' artwork from Kindergarten and First Grade
• go through my closet and organize (I believe this item NEVER leaves my list)
• re-pot the house plants whose roots are ready to explode out of their pots
• painting projects I bought paint for but never started
• de-clutter the various junk drawers in our home

You get the idea.  The 20 or so video cassettes are also part of the list, but I think John and I can convert the good ones and discard the empty or messed up ones within a few weeks.

This project did bring up a tense conversation between John and me. John was annoyed that I planned on paying Costco to convert all these videos into digital format.  He said he can do it himself except he needed to clear space in his hard drive (video requires a lot of Gigabytes) and he needed to clear the space on his desk for the two camcorders he needed to feed the video into his computer....He hasn't found the time to do any of this for the last 5 years.  I don't completely understand the process he described.  I do understand that if I pay Costco $17.99, they will convert 2 hours of video and put it into a DVD for me within 3 weeks. 

This conversation got John started on setting up his computer to do the conversion.  I did not MAKE him do this.  I did not ASK him to do this, but just like that "to do" list I have above, he may have also felt like these tapes had been neglected long enough.  John converted two Hi-8 cassettes into digital format that night.  We also ended up watching little 3-year old Ian open presents at Christmas. But really, that took all evening. My "to-do" list will grow before I can check video tapes off that list.  And here's the other thing, that to-do list involves things... things I haven't kept organized, things I haven't started, things I haven't worn or touched....

This bring to mind the stuff, the stuff, the stuff... that takes my time and energy when I'm not working, sleeping, eating, or taking care of whatever Lucas needs at the moment (Ian doesn't ask Mom for much these days).  I have been seriously considering a major overhaul of the stuff in this apartment. 

I would like to spend my time here on Earth in a better way (since I am over the hill... and heading down!) The more time I spend with my stuff.. and it's good stuff...  the more I think I don't want to spend another minute with extraenous stuff.  Why should part of my Sunday be all about shoving my purses into a cabinet? 

I think this topic deserves its own post.... to be continued.

(the above image is from Kristen Lamb's blog about "The Junk Drawer of Life")

Vintage Ian

I am watching a video of Ian (age 3) taken by my father-in-law, (Lolo) Rafael Sarmiento.  It's a Hi-8 video from 1993.  It is starting to show signs of degrading.  That makes me sad because I told myself to convert these cassette-type videos into digital format years ago.  Maybe I could have saved this video.

But there are a few minutes of it here and there that are ok.  There is one part that struck me.  Ian was playing with his Lolo's camera tripod.  He was trying to look through the arm that extends out from the tripod.  He was pretending it was a telescope!  I fast-forwarded to two minutes later, and you would think that this 3-year-old would have raced to another part of the house distracted by something and started another activity.  Ian was still in the same position investigating the tripod.  This time, he was trying the hinges of the tripod, moving it back and forth, twisting left and right, with such tremendous focus.  All the while his Lolo had the camera on him. 

More minutes into the video showed Ian in front of the Christmas Tree.  He was opening a Christmas present.  It took him 2 1/2 minutes to open the present.  He meticulously peeled the paper and tape off the box... not really trying to be careful of ripping it... but just studying each movement and layer very carefully.  When he got the box open, Ian slowly pulled  out a cookie jar shaped like Santa Claus.  Then Ian grabbed the  lid (Santa's head) and put it on his fist and walked around the house like that.

If you gave Ian a shrink-wrapped item, he would sit down and try to find the seam so that he could begin to open it.  If his chubby little fingers didn't work, then he would use his teeth. If he finally surrendered and needed your help, he would watch you intensely to see how you opened the package.  He was always determined.

That focus and curiosity is what helped Ian succeed at school.  You can tell by the hours of video his Lolo took of him that Ian got that from the Sarmiento side. 

Stag Silence... months later

The habit of waking up on a leisurely Saturday morning and turning the TV on to anything that is on is not that easy to break.  I found myself one morning (a month after turning off cable TV) staring into the dark screen of the TV with a yearning for something that no TV could give me.  Was it companionship?  Was it a yearning for conversation or a need for meditation? Whatever it was I needed, it could not be satisfied with the TV.  As I mentioned in an older post, my family still watches TV from time to time, but because we have no cable anymore, we need to know what we want to watch on Hulu or Netflix before we turn the TV on.  It's a new and refreshing experience... to think about what you want before turning on the TV.

As I stared at the dark screen of the TV that morning, I knew I did not want to turn it on.  I needed something else.  This is what we did instead....



Going on 6 months of no cable, I haven't regretted the decision.  I think John misses "The Mentalist" and "Weeds", but he seems to find his shows eventually online or on the network's website.  We have been fine without cable.  Even Lucas watches less TV.  If he does watch, he chooses a show like his favorite "Johnny Test" and plays it over and over again.  But what 7-year-old doesn't do that?

Stag Juice

Since eating seemingly smaller portions did not make an impact on our weight loss goal, we thought we would try something else. Around this time, we watched a documentary called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. Sounds cheerful, right? I was inexplicably captivated by the idea of consuming green juice just like I was inexplicably drawn to reading all the Twilight books. It sounds weird and almost unhealthy to just drink green juice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Joe Cross narrated his journey across America meeting and talking to people about health and fitness while doing a juice fast (living solely on vegetable juice). He drove from state to state with his Breville Juice Fountain in his trunk. When Joe got hungry, he would purchase some vegetables like kale, sweet potato and carrots from a store and juice them our of his trunk. Then he and his film crew would go out and interview people for the rest of the day.

Here are some statistics that stuck with me:
After 60 days of consuming massive amounts of kale, cucumbers, pears, apples, onions, spinach, parsley and tomatoes in juice form, he’d lost 80 pounds and was taking 2.5 milligrams of Prednisone, down from the original 15 he’d been prescribed. (The Prednisone was for a painful auto-immune disease he had been diagnosed with a few years back.) After an additional 70 days of eating only fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds, he was back in Sydney, 100 pounds lighter and off the drug completely.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/movies/super_slenderize_me_5pjnsV6Qk2GcznwAL2gttI#ixzz1rEQz8n2P

For a few days after the documentary, John and I joked about drinking green juice. "If it's green going in, would it be green coming out?" he asked. "Would it even taste good?" I wondered.

Kale juice? Spinach in liquid form? Ugh!
But still I was intrigued. I thought John had dismissed the whole thing as silly.

The funny think is John was shopping for juicers on Amazon the whole time we were making sarcastic jokes about drinking your salad. The combination of John's constant curiosity and constantly being on the internet led him to research and price-check high quality centrifuge juicers. He found a good brand that was refurbished. And it was being sold at a great discount. Lo and behold, on Valentine's Day, instead of a box of chocolates, I received a box with a juicer inside.

Our juicing story began.
No, we did not go on a 60-day juice fast like Joe Cross. We weren't sure we could drink green juice for one day let alone 60 days. The day we unpacked the juicer, we had some carrots and apples in the fridge so we thought, "Why not?"

Surprise! It was not gross. It was actually good. Of course apple juice is naturally sweet and carrots are root vegetables that contain a bit of carbs. But this was a great start. The next day, I went to the grocery store and got broccoli and cucumber to add to the mix.

To be continued....

Stags and smaller portions

Stags out in the wild are herbivores. They only eat plants. They can graze on shrubs or grasses. They can also munch on foliage or berries.

The stags that I live with eat everything. They are omnivores. We humans possess the ability to digest almost anything:

Besides being 98% water, human saliva also starts the digestion process:
Amylase is secreted from the parotid glands and breaks down carbohydrates. Protease is secreted from the submandibular glands and begins protein digestion. Lipase is secreted from the sublingual (under the tongue) glands to initiate fat digestion. click here for more

That has always convinced me that humans are designed to eat whatever they can get their hands on. This made sense during caveman days when humans spent hours and sometimes days hunting animals, gathering berries or grain or nuts, just to stay alive. If a caveman happened upon a wild boar and killed it, then those humans were carnivores that day. The next day, if they could only find wild grains, acorns, and a few berries, then they were herbivores.

I have been thinking a lot about this because John and I started making significant changes to our food choices in the last few months. Those of you following this blog may have read about our switch to brown rice... I say food choices, because our society is bombarded with health advice and food suggestions from low-fat, low-carb diets... to high-protein, no-carb diets.... to vegan diets... to counting Weight Watcher points every day. Part of the food-related problems of our modern society is that we have many, many choices. And often, we choose the wrong foods to put in our bodies. John and I were no exception.

Our trials and tribulations regarding eating healthier started when I bought a new set of dishes. They were meant to be dessert plates, about 8 inches in diameter. I bought them because they were very cute, but realizing that we could only put a small amount of food on them, I thought it might help us decrease our food portions. When I first used these dishes to serve dinner, John looked at me kinda funny but didn't say anything.

We ate smaller portions but nothing happened to the scale when we got on it. Was it because our little dessert plates were piled high? Was it the second helpings we felt we needed since our plates were so tiny? This strategy did not seem to work...

To be continued

Stag Silence

I walked around the apartment aimlessly. Do you know the feeling when you walked into a room not remembering why you headed over there in the first place? I do that every once in a while. But I did it a LOT today. I walked into the kitchen and stopped to think why I was there. Not hungry... not thirsty... dishes done (Thanks John)... Hmmm.

I left the kitchen and sat at the dining table and looked over at the TV. It was off. I looked around, distracted, at the table top with and papers strew about. Did I sit here to clean up? No.

I see the basket of freshly washed laundry. Well, since I'm sitting here having forgotten why I came here... I fold the clothes slowly, paying attention to the developing holes in Lucas' sweatpants. Boy, he has really gotten longer in the last year. Think of Lucas, my mind wanders to the silence ... eerie silence of the downstairs of the apartment. It's been so silent all morning. But I was not alone! John and Lucas were in the same room! No Lucas-animal noises, no commercial music, no voices competing with gaming sounds. What's going on?

To see what they were doing (that was SO VERY quiet), I passed the dark screen of the TV to sit on the couch. I reach for the TV remote, ready to get a dose of QVC... Then it hits me....

I just remembered we disconnected our Cable box yesterday. It's been more than 24 hours without cable TV. Lucas has not noticed yet, but I feel like I'm going insane walking around my apartment like a lost puppy. I thought maybe I needed another (a third) cup of coffee, or something!

I think it's cable TV withdrawal. I thought Lucas was the addict, but maybe it's me. I keep the TV on as "background noise." Why anyone would need background noise is beyond me. I am always complaining of the noise in this place (see my very first post on Stag Nation), so to add something to the background was probably crazy.

I am not saying we will stop watching TV. We like TV. We like our shows: The Walking Dead, The Mentalist, Royal Pains... but we also know that when the TV is just on in the background, we tend to just mindlessly plop on the couch and find some suitable, non-irritating thing to pass the time until some other show comes along. Next thing you know, it's dinner time and I haven't thawed out the meat yet.

Thanks to Hulu, Netflix streaming, and the internet, we can purposefully find and watch shows we love. Lucas can look through the menu of available kids shows or movies. And we watch (most of the time commercial-free) for a finite amount of time. When the show ends, we turn off the TV (in theory).

A CBS News article points out that this idea of ditching the cable box is becoming popular: "Pay TV subscribers are declining, and according to a new survey by Forrester Research, people now use the Web more than their televisions." See the full article here.

This will be a good way for Lucas to learn to be a more active viewer of whatever he wants to view. This might be a good lesson in time-management for him... and for us.

Happy (Healthy) Valentine's Day, Stags

I remember when I was in elementary school. Valentine's day would come around and that would mean Valentine cards made of red paper and doilies, glitter, store-bought valentines (with envelope included), and CANDY! Just this year, Bloomberg Business Week predicted that over 140 million pounds of candy will be sold for Valentine's day... 60 percent of it is chocolate. Nothing wrong with that. I certainly looked forward to and got a good share of candy from friends and classmates on Valentine's day. One of the iconic symbol of Valentine's day continues to be the candy hearts with romantic sayings like "BE MINE" or "KISS ME."

Fast forward 2 decades: Over the years, several school districts have banned Valentine candy. Now, when kids exchange Valentines on Feb. 14, they give out cards, pencils, stickers, or other small, non-sweet treats to show their friendship and affection for each other.

Lucas' school was on-board with the idea. His teacher sent home a letter asking parents to bring a valentine for every child in the class IF they bring valentines at all. So it's an all-or- nothing policy. I imagine that this there to avoid hurt feelings if someone does not get a valentine. The teacher also politely encouraged us to keep the valentines candy-free. So Lucas and I went to the dollar store to look for cards, stickers, pencils, erasers, and .... and... boy there was a lot of enticing red, pink, and purple CANDY! But we were good and we stuck to our sweets-free shopping list for Lucas' class

... with a few Goo Goo bars for Mommy.

Old habits die hard!

Stags Eating Healthy

We have had a new wave of healthy eating in our household lately. We started implementing little changes a couple of years ago:

• cooking at home more
• encouraging Lucas to "just try" something new
  
• eating less meat (not applicable to Lucas)
• making veggies a larger percent on the plate
• keeping "healthier" snacks at home
• drinking less soda (John hardly drinks it now!)
  

The most painless and least noticable change was converting from white rice to brown rice. When John and I ate brown rice for the first time, we just kind of looked at each other with scrunched-up expressions on our faces as if we just put saw dust into our mouths. Brown rice is really quite good. Plus, the health benefits made it worth a try. White rice causes a rapid spike in blood sugar. Also, when brown rice is milled and polished to make white rice, a lot of the magnesium and the cholesterol-lowering LDL fats in the bran are also removed. That leaves only the white fluffy grain we all know and love!

But switching overnight from fluffy, creamy, slightly sweet white rice to the hearty, nutty- tasting, fiber-rich texture of brown rice was probably a bad idea. Ian seemed open to it right away, but not Lucas!

So we started by combining the two rices and cooking them together (1/4 brown to 3/4 white). It was a bit noticeable but not enough to bother me. Time went by and we ate the odd rice combo with little interruption. Lucas was on board. After a few weeks, we make the proportions 50/50 brown to white. That stayed that way for a few months because the holidays were upon us and neither John nor I thought about the rice for a while.

Last week, we make the transition to 80% brown rice.... no complaints from anyone! Now adobo and stir-fry doesn't taste any different to us with brown rice. I look forward to buying just brown rice soon... it's a pain keeping both kinds in my small, small pantry. As a mom, I feel good making this change in my family's diet, especially with picky eaters (ahem, John is one of them).

Quiet Stags

"What game do you want to play tonight?" John asked.

"Ummm, UNO or Lego Heroica or Operation..." replied Lucas.

Around 8 pm at our little apartment, the TV is turned off, the computer monitors are dimmed, and all electronic games are paused. It marks the beginning of "Quiet time" in our household. I came up with the concept a while ago out of frustration with all the noise and stimulation from the TV and computers. It was not allowing Lucas to settle down and prepare for bed. But it was John who decided that we would definitely start the nightly routine of "Quiet Time."

Studies show that bright lights directly into our eyes from the TV, computer monitor, iPad, etc. can affect sleep patterns. These devices can "fool our brains into thinking its daylight" even if it's not, and our bodies respond accordingly (click here for news article). But who doesn't love to surf the net, check their facebook, or watch a documentary before bed? GUILTY!

So, even though the habit was hard to break for us adults, we thought we should give it a try to get Lucas to sleep earlier and get a good nights rest. The first night, we expected a protest from Lucas... "No! I don't want Quiet Time! It's boring! You cheaters (his favorite thing to say)"

The first night we tried it, Lucas was freshly showered and dressed in his pajamas. We decided to play Lego Heroica. It's a game board made of Lego pieces, Lego characters, and even a Lego dice. It was really fun! Lucas loved it. No complaints, no whining, and no crying. The next night, we played Operation. The following night, Lucas learned how to play UNO. He is starting to think strategically!

I have to admit that turning off the electronic devices was harder for John and me. I had to turn off the TV in the middle of my Rachel Maddow Show. John had to stop defending the republic in his Star Wars game. John and I joke (quietly to ourselves) that "Quiet Time" is "suffering time" for us.... No, not really. It's very good for us as well.

Sometimes it takes a 7 year old to change the bad habits of his parents.

Stag Teeth

If you have met Lucas, you know that size-wise, everything about him is small. Lucas is just fitting into his size 6 pants even though he just turned 7. I know people come in all shapes and sizes. But Lucas' smallness also extends into his jaw. I once heard a dentist say that mixed-race children sometimes get the Asian jaw (smaller) and the Caucasian teeth (bigger) in the same mouth. Ian had to get 2 teeth pulled out when he was round 10 years old to make room for his other erupting teeth. I was worried that he would have weird gaps in his teeth as a result, but that did not happen. His teeth are actually remarkably straight for being a thumb-sucker (Sorry, Ian!)... no braces needed.

Lucas' recent dental check ups have been going well, except that the possible use of a palate expander may likely be needed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatal_expander The need for this contraption is evident now that his two front baby teeth have fallen out and are being replaced by giant chicklet-sized front teeth. Don't get me wrong, they are beautiful, smooth, shiny new front teeth, but there will be no room for much else after they emerge. We finally consulted with an orthodontist and he wants to place an expander in this summer... Gulp! John and I will be given a key that turns the screw in the expander about once a week helping to widen the upper jaw gradually.

Lucas will have to be introduced to this delicately. He may feel like he is being punished for something he did... "if you are a bad boy, the dentist will give you a PALATE EXPANDER!"... Plus having Mom or Dad turn the screw a bit each week will probably but a slight strain on our relationship... How many Legos can be purchase to make this painless?

Maybe we should start saving up now?