Adventures in Homeschooling Socialization, I guess?

Yesterday (Wednesday, January 26; it's taken me a while to finish this) was beautiful but chilly. First sunny day in a while, but in the low 40s. So the meet-up we usually have at parks on Wednesdays met at a coffee shop. The organizer is a super planner, and did call them and ask if it would be okay. Everyone brought board games. I was on the fence about going, but Mal wanted to take Sum Swamp (a birthday present from Uncle Khrys and Aunt Mei Li a couple of years ago; he still loves it!). I tried to prepare him with the idea that if everyone brought a game, we probably wouldn't have time to play them all,

First, after we'd been there a bit, one of my friends came up and said, "I wanted to come talk to you for a minute before you take off without saying anything." This is what I do. A lot of times, Mal is having fun, and then he's ready to go. So we go. When I got home, I messaged her, "Irish Goodbyes; they're my jam." She texted back, "100%."

I guess I don't understand the point of making sure people know you're leaving. I mean, if I knew we were needing to plan something or someone had told me to check in with them before I left, okay. But there are often 20+ moms and dads at these events. And if I don't tell EVERYONE good-bye, then how do I pick who to tell? If two people are in a conversation, I really don't want to get it off-track by insinuating myself into it just to say, "Miss me, folks!"

Anyway, yesterday, we were there for about an hour. Mal played one game with a friend of his (not the game he'd brought; I was proud of him). Then the other kid wanted to play a different game with a different kid. Mal REALLY wanted to play his game, and his two best friends were in the middle of another game altogether.

There is a sweet maybe 4-year-old boy who is super sweet and friendly. He loves our dog. I think he just doesn't have a lot of language skills yet. He understands things, and responds. He's just a cute little guy who loves playing with everyone, but doesn't talk much. I asked him if he wanted to play Sum Swamp, and he did. Mal got to play, and I helped this kiddo a bit, then his mom realized we were playing and jumped in. Later, she thanked me for showing him the game... and I thanked her for letting him play the whole thing, because Mal was so keyed up to play it. Actually, the boy won. And Mal was a GREAT sport about it! I was pretty proud.

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By the way, yes, it was in the high 40s and yes, my son was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

Also, since this was indoors and Omicron isn't quite peaked here, AND all of the employees had on masks, we wore ours. I told Mal before the other kids got there, "It's possible that we're the only ones who are wearing masks. That's okay." And we were. It wasn't any big deal.

Later...

Hey, guess what? One of the kids there got sick and tested positive for Covid 2 days later. Fortunately, she's fine; had all of her shots and had a mild case. 

Yesterday (Sunday, January 30), Mal wanted to go to a park we've never been to before (he does this pretty often; it's tricky finding new ones!), so we did. He ended up finding a playmate and hanging out for two hours! I walked the dog around, did some training, was a little bored, honestly. It was a gorgeous day, though.

Okay, well, I was going to write more about planning our upcoming vacation, but Mal is having an existential crisis because he just realized that the house we're going to build isn't going to look like the modern farmhouse $1.4M house we looked at yesterday. So I have to go take care of that.

Austin Christmas Staycation

This Christmas, we didn't put up our tree because puppy. Instead, I wrapped our fake bamboo plant in lights and put the star on top (fortunately, I'd neglected to pack it up last year, so it was easily accessible). Actually, I put the star on top of a telescoping pole intended to help unscrew lightbulbs that are up high. The "bamboo" isn't strong enough to hold up the star that we have.

Anyway.

Christmas morning, I just covered the kids' presents with blankets, and it was just as much fun to discover what was under there, AND there was plenty to clean up because stuff comes in packaging, so we didn't miss out on anything by not having wrapping.

After we'd done that, I got a message that the electronic key to the room we'd reserved downtown was ready! We played a little more, then packed up and drove into Austin.

On the way, we stopped by Pease Park for James to see it for the first time. It was pretty busy, but not any busier than the other weekday Mal and I went. 

Mal wasn't super interested in playing a long time like we did last time, though, because he knew our hotel room was ready, and that's his jam.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites on South Congress. It is a great location, and the price was perfect. I'd wanted us to stay closer to where we used to live, but even the places that seemed pretty well-priced were inordinately expensive once they added on a pet deposit and mandatory valet. I looked into Spot Hero, but many of the lots downtown don't offer in/out privileges, and I didn't think we'd never need to leave, but wasn't sure. Then my sister reminded me that they'd stayed at Embassy Suites several times when they'd visited Austin from Dallas, and it ended up being perfect.

We had a king bed suite, planning for Mal and James to sleep in the bedroom, and me to sleep in the "living room" with the dog. When we first got to the hotel, we just chilled out for a while. And when I say "chilled out," I waited for the dog to calm down. He was sniffing around a lot, because it's a new place. Even though he's never peed inside anywhere we've ever been, I was still pretty nervous until he peed outside. And we were on the 8th floor, so between James and myself making a couple of trips out each until he finally relieved himself, it was a lot of ground covered!

This was our view. Not too shabby!

For dinner, I ordered Teji's for James and me, and McDonald's for Mal. Grown-up food was being delivered, but Mal and I walked down to pick his food up. And McDonald's isn't open on Christmas, Which is cool, I'm glad their employees have the day off; but it'd be nice if the app had gotten the memo. Still, it was a nice hour-long walk for Mal and me.

Mal ended up eating some mac and cheese from the hotel store, and was more than happy with that and an apple and some Airheads as dinner.

That night, I was a little stressed when it was bedtime. The hotel is really pretty, and part of that is that it has an atrium. That also meant that pretty much every noise in the hotel is "hearable" in the rooms. Luke kept jumping up and running to the door and whining when a dog would bark two floors down, or when a kid on the bottom floor was crying. THEN someone had a screaming, out of control kid running up and down our "hall" for a good 45 minutes after 11:00 PM. The man was yelling at the kid, and the kid would holler louder. Then people were calling down to people on the bottom floor. Just before I called the front desk to ask if this was typical, I guess it quieted down. 

Luke slept with me in a full-size sofa pull-out, and everything went pretty well after it finally quieted down.

Sunday morning, Luke woke up at around 6, so I threw my shoes on and we went for our walk, even though it was dark. Unlike our neighborhood at home, Austin proper has PLENTY of lights to illuminate even the darkest hour. (Too many, frankly.)

We got back to the hotel and rested a bit, but Luke was keyed up. A bit before 9, I woke James up because Mal had gotten up and I needed to get the dog back outside. James took Mal down to eat while I walked the dog to a fenced dog park. There is an off-leash area in Auditorium Shores, but it's not fenced, and it's close both to the hike and bike trail and some pretty busy roads.

The walk was nice, and the park was basic but had some pups for Luke to play with.

By the time we got back, we'd already gotten in 10,000 steps, and it wasn't even 11 o'clock!

James had brought me breakfast, which I ate while the dog slept. He actually got into his travel crate and took a nap of his own accord, after our having put him in there a couple of times to manage him when he was acting out.

Mal loved playing in the hotel. He would go out and "buy groceries" and do all sorts of missions, walking around the floor, circling the atrium, and coming back to just outside the room.

In the early afternoon, we got out to visit Toy Joy.

Then it was back to the room for some rest and relaxation.

James ended up walking over to McDonald's to get Mal's promised meal from the day before.

In the late afternoon, we decided to walk down to see the Capitol Christmas tree.

I was so proud of Mal! He'd been flagging on the walk home from Toy Joy, which was only .6 miles from our hotel. The Capitol is 1.2 miles, and we went all the way around so Mal could see the "pit."

When we got back to the room, I drove over to Sandy's to get burgers for James and me, and a shake for Mal.

Everyone was pretty wiped. I had walked more than I normally walk in a day, but James walked A LOT MORE than he usually does, and his knee was hurting (he also realized this morning that he hadn't taken his allopurinol so that might have contributed). Mal played on his iPad and I played Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker. Luke pretty much slept from the time we got back until James took him for his nightly elimination a bit after 9.

Last night was MUCH quieter than Christmas night. Once we were in bed, the hotel was reasonably quiet. But then I realized that since the fountain on the bottom floor makes the noise it makes, the hotel lobby music was pretty loud. Not loud enough that I could make out lyrics, but enough that I could hear it. I am really not fun to be around when it's time to go to sleep. I'm extremely picky and sleep lightly.

Anyway, this morning, we took it easy (including Luke's and my walk, which happily occurred at 6:45 instead of 6:00 today!) and packed up after breakfast. The dog had gone to sleep, and when we'd finally gotten totally ready to go, decided to wake him up.

We drove straight home, and have been super busy after our big 48-hour getaway. James and I put everything away, he washed some dishes D had left out because they didn't know we'd be home so early, emptied the litter boxes, and got some work done in the back yard (he's building a smallish test project before we try to start on the house), then came in a bit to finish up Mal's last overly-supervised bath, and is now at the store. I did two loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms, did a dishwasher load, put together about 1/3 of Mal's Boba Fett's starship LEGO set, started Mal's bath, and then took D to the post office.

We're going to hang out and maybe watch a movie tonight. Hope everyone had a great Christmas, and that you can get some rest, too!

A Sneak-Peak into Mal's Day Out with His BFF

Last Saturday, Mal wanted to go to Indigo Play, so we picked up one of his best friends, a girl named Kona (we've talked about her before) and she went with us.

I have to share some of the conversations, because it was a fun, fun afternoon.

First, when we picked Kona up, she gave us a packet of Christmas cookies. As we were driving off...

Kona: We made those cookies from touch.

Me: Oh, are they thumbprint cookies?

Kona: I mean, we... they weren't at the store.

Me: You mean you had the ingredients at home and mixed them together?

Kona: Yeah!

Me: You made them from scratch!

They had cute kid conversations on the way, then played for almost four hours. It was loud and exhausting, but they had a fun time. Mal was not ready to leave when I told him it was time to go (I later found out that Kona had been ready to leave for some time, and he hadn't relayed that information to me), so I tried to sweeten the deal by telling them that when I went to the grocery store, they could each pick out anything they wanted to take home with them.

In the meantime, Indigo Play had free lollipops sitting out, so in the car, Mal had the stick hanging out of his mouth.

Mal: I look like a guy from the 8000s.

Me: The 8000s?

Mal: No... the 18s?

Me: The 1800s?

Mal: Yes!

Me: With like a cigarette hanging out of your mouth?

Mal: No. The... tumbleweed.

Me: Oh! Straw? 

Mal: Right.

Kona: (brightly) Yeah, you do, Mal! You really do!

Mal: Kona, you're such a good friend. It means so much to me for you to say that.

When we got to the grocery store, Mal quickly decided that he wanted some Lucky Charms. I needed to get apples, milk, jalapeño slices (which Kona found for us), and eggs, so we headed back to the dairy section.

While I was looking (unsuccessfully) for lactose-free whole milk, inspiration hit Kona. "I want a small chocolate milk!"

Me: Good choice!

I didn't see her open the milk case, but as she put her choice into the cart, I realized she'd picked a half gallon... which IS smaller than a gallon!

Later, when we were in the car, Mal said, "Mom! Kona is drinking out of the bottle!"

Kona's mom reported that she did share with her sisters when she got home. I guess they don't mind drinking after each other.

Those kids were just a lot of fun to hang out with. 

It's weird: I remember being very stressed when D had a friend over for whom I was responsible. It always felt like I was "on." I don't know whether I've mellowed, or... well, yeah. I've probably mellowed. Anyway, I'm happy to chauffeur and eavesdrop on Mal and Kona any time.

A Month of Sundays

It has been exactly a week since I posted... and I just realized that on October 29, I included a picture of Mal with his loose tooth and the caption: "This tooth needs to come out!" You'll be pleased to know that, a month and a half later, it is still hanging on by a thread in his face. His adult tooth is basically in, and it shoved the other tooth off to the side, but Mal won't loosen it, and he freaks out if we try to help him. I not-so-secretly hope that he bumps something with his mouth and it gets knocked out.

But no. His balance is great.

Right now, we have a freeze warning for overnight. Yesterday, it was 83 and broke the record for December 10 in Austin. It will be in the 80s again on Tuesday. It's difficult to dress under these circumstances. Also, we got a "dumb" thermostat when we got our "new" a/c in 2020, so we keep having to switch between cooling and heating. I'm sure the unit enjoys the challenge.

We've been having mostly near-home adventures lately. Mal is growing up so much, and is becoming more mature in so many ways. The other day, I'd left a chair pulled out and the dog jumped up on the table to try to steal some of Mal's LEGOs. When that happened, I apologized to Mal for not pushing the chair in. I said, "That was my fault; I know he'll do that if he can." Mal said, very seriously, "Mom, I want to be responsible so I'll say that it was my fault." I told him that was very noble, but in this specific case, it really WAS my fault. We've talked previously about him blaming folks for things like if he runs into something because he is looking at his computer while he's walking, and he'll say, "I KNEW you shouldn't have put that there!" So at least he's trying to figure it out.

We're working with a private trainer for several sessions over the next few weeks before Luke's intermediate dog training class starts. We've implemented several suggestions from the first session, and I feel like we're already seeing some progress.

We're also working with a real estate lawyer to get our lots re-platted differently so we can start working on our plan for the back lot. We had our first phone call with the architect, and it was a trip. We were kind of feeling iffy about it, but his most recent email was a lot more down-to-earth, and it seems like we can move forward with him.

Right at this moment, I am with Mal and his friend at Indigo Play. I don't think we've ever been on the weekend, and holy crap, is it loud. James is getting ready to go get his Covid booster. Mine was scheduled for last weekend, but the pharmacy didn't get the vaccine, so I rescheduled... and they canceled that. Next weekend, I'm going up to Temple to try there.

Oh, that just reminded me that Mal's 2nd dose is tomorrow. I need to start mentally psyching myself up now.

Building Our Dream (?) House?

I might have mentioned, we almost moved back in May. It didn't work out (the real estate market is cooling off but still pretty cut-throat), and since then, we had the water heater bust a pipe (again), and we had to do a bunch of remediation and repair. Then James decided we needed to move the pigeon/chicken loft/tool shed, because we realized it's probably on the corner of our leach field. This weekend, Luke actually pointed out to us that the leach field has a leak (not at the shed; elsewhere). And Sunday night, we had to call our a/c guys for a recurring problem we have with our a/c drain clogging. 

Note: I started this blog post on October 13. Since then, our heat pump has malfunctioned and fortunately the company we use came out and didn't charge us. But also, we've realized that water is STILL getting into our house in the master bedroom. James pulled out the molded baseboards and drywall, and we pulled back the carpet and pad (again) to dry out the subfloor. We fixed a roof thing, tested it, and it seemed okay. But there was STILL WATER GETTING INTO THE HOUSE. We later realized there was a crack in the masonry, and maybe that was it? While James was fixing that, Laura noticed that our non-functional outdoor shower (only has hot water, so is scalding after a few moments) was kind of moldy around the handle. Got a plumber out to look at it and they closed off the valves, one of which (hot, of course) was dripping... for who knows how long. THEN we got a leak detection company out today, and they actually capped the lines to the shower just to be extra safe, and they could not make any more water come into the floor. For good measure, they caulked around the shower trim we had installed five months ago. I'm still nervous. I'll be un-nervous after a month has passed and we've had a good rain and there is no more water getting into the house.

Moving on...

This kind of thing makes me think we should rent.

We talked about it: selling our house and moving to a rental. The problem is that if you rent from a private owner, they're liable to sell the house out from under you. And if you live in an apartment... well, James's options for a workshop are pretty bleak.

So, we had our back lot surveyed, and spent the past month working through a "program" from an architect James found and really liked. We've sent the program in, and he's going to ponder it for a while and get started on some drawings. We know we want to build with eco-friendly materials like cob or straw bale or earth bags. We know we want the house to be whimsical and modest. We know we don't want to be paying property tax on three lots anymore, too.

James is thinking about re-platting our lots so that we take the part of the second lot our yard is on and make it part of the lot where we're planning to build, mostly to assure that we have lots of trees and no one decides to buy this house on the two lots, move the fence in, clear the second lot, and built another house right up on us.

So, hang on to your butts... we'll see how this goes!

Marrying Mal

A few weeks ago, Mal was asking me if his cousin's son was his in-law. I told him no, he doesn't have any in-laws. He was pretty bummed by it, and I explained that he wouldn't have in-laws until he got married. He thought about it for a few moments, then said, "If, in the future, I married Kona, then you'd be her mother-in-law! And her mom would be my mother-in-law."

He was pretty excited about the idea, and that was that.

Until a few days later... 

We'd been at a homeschool gathering, and on the way home, Mal said, "Mom, you know how I've been thinking about the future? Well, Kona has another friend who was thinking about marrying her."

Then the next time we saw them, Mal told me, "His name is Andy. The one who wants to marry Kona. I hope he changes his mind."

I said, "Well, actually it's up to Kona who she marries."

Then next time, after we left, Mal was musing, "I really do hope Kona chooses me." I said, "Mal, you have a lot of time to figure that out." He shook his head and asked, "Mom, have you ever heard that kids grow up quickly?" I tried not to laugh, instead explaining that literally, it was at least eleven years before he could legally get married.

Then after all of that time, earlier this week, we came back to Urban Air for the first time in months (Delta variant is waning). Mal met a girl and played with her for a couple of hours. When she left, Mal came over to me and whispered, "I have a secret that she told me not to tell you... We went and got another piece of candy from the front desk when no one was looking." 

I laughed at that and asked, "Did you tell her we don't care what you eat?" Mal said, "No. But I have another secret." Still whispering in my ear, "You know how Kona has someone else who wants to marry her? I can marry this friend instead." "Do you know her name?" He did not. He ran after to ask, but Urban Air is really loud.

And they all lived happily ever after.

This tooth NEEDS TO COME OUT.

"You Look Great" as blatant fatphobia

This weekend, I attended an event where one of the people there has lost upwards of 100 pounds during the pandemic. He himself was pretty low-key about it, only talking when people remarked or asked questions. He said that basically his weight loss was due to doing mental health work and realizing that he was spending a lot of time eating to avoid wrestling with his anxiety and other issues.

Twice, I heard people say, "You look great!" Both times, I cringed. Both times, I didn't say anything because I haven't seen these people in at least a year and a half, and some of them I had never met before. When my mom recently remarked that someone who'd lost a bunch of weight "looks great," I said, "She looks smaller. She looked fine before."

I wish I'd spoken up this weekend.

Fatphobia is ugly.

Complementing a person's looks when they have lost weight is fraught. You don't know whether they lost weight on purpose (in this case, it sounded like he hadn't), or even if intentional weight loss is something to celebrate. In my case, I got a LOT of positive feedback when I dropped pounds... but the reason I was doing it was to avoid losing someone's affections. That's not something for which I should have been given a pat on the back. I lost weight to comply with someone else's ideal of feminine beauty. I should have been encouraged to explore why I felt compelled to do that instead of insisting that I be treated with respect regardless of my size.

Furthermore, complementing someone on their weight loss implies that they look better now than they did before. This is problematic on several accounts. One is that, if they are like 95% of people who intentionally lose a great deal of weight, their body will fight to put that weight back on... and it will. So when they return to a larger size, they're left with the ghosts of complements past, and they know that they're being judged as having let themselves go or some other such nonsense.

Another problem is that there are often (and there were in this case) people in the vicinity who weigh in the ballpark of that person's "before." You're basically telling them that they'd be better and more attractive if they could just get it together and drop some poundage. That's thoughtless, and it's rude.

The fact is that thinner people do not objectively look "better" than bigger people. We've learned as a culture to value thinness, but one way to help fix this is to intentionally expose ourselves to a variety of body sizes. It's difficult to do that with mainstream media, because most people on television and in magazines are still extremely small. But a great thing about TikTok and Instagram and YouTube is that you can find bodies that are differently-sized, have different levels of physical ability, and whose gender expressions vary from the pretty narrow spectrum commonly seen in content generated primarily for commercial success.

It seems silly that we have to remind ourselves that fat people aren't failed thin people (thanks, Virgie Tovar), and that there are fat folks living great lives everywhere all of the time. When someone loses weight, it's just that: weight loss. It's not good. It's not bad. It just is. Same as when someone gains weight: not good, not bad... just reality.

If we could find our way to this understanding, life would be so much better for all of us.

And next time, I'm going to say something in that moment. I've really had enough.