Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Adversity
Sometimes I worry that my kids won't have what it takes to make it through the tough times of life. Many times a day they crumble into emotional surrender at the slightest hint of a challenge. Practicing the piano. Doing homework. Picking up toys. Putting away clean laundry. Being nice to each other. Depending on their mental state at any given moment a request to help with any of these requests could be met with apparent incapacitation, accompanied by expressions of agony and supreme indignance that anyone would even think of asking them to do such things.
Today I found that, in fact, when the going gets tough they really can hack it. And I'm not talking about tough like, "Mom asked me to empty the dishwasher, and then Dad wanted me to mow the lawn" tough.
We went to check out an air show today at the nearby Air Force base. It's a bit cool for this time of year, and there was some rain in the forecast, but we didn't think that major precautions against bad weather were necessary. We drove to the base, parked the car, and walked at least a mile to the show entrance. It was overcast and breezy, and some of the kids in shorts complained a bit. We basically ignored them, pointed out the cool aerobatics going on overhead, and mostly enjoyed ourselves.
After we had been watching the show for a while the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse. A full-on thunderstorm arrived with high winds and heavy rain. We had three sweatshirts for the seven of us. It was hopeless to try to stay dry or keep enjoying the show. With droves of other people we began the long walk back to the car, being pelted and lashed with rain that soaked us through and even stung at times.
Given the reaction I might get at home for simply asking someone to put on their shoes or set the dinner table I half expected at least some of them to crumble to the tarmac as the rain poured down on us, and declare that they could not face the walk back to the car. They did no such thing. It was a miserable experience, heads down, squinting eyes, fighting through wetness and windchill that made the 49F temperature feel more like 35F. Amidst the physical discomfort, and even pain, they soldiered on resolutely.
There were a few words of encouragement spoken, but no cajoling or convincing was needed. They seemed to understand that our plight, though not particularly serious, was also not going to go away by complaining or throwing tantrums. The only way out was to take care of ourselves, even if that meant marching through the freezing rain. They seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation without our intervention, and rose to the occasion resolutely.
As we sat in the car, laughing over how cold and soaked we really were, we waited for the heat to thaw us out. Long before the heat made me feel better physically, my heart was warmed to see how resilient they all were, and from thinking back on the way they had just helped each other through shared trial with such grace and strength. The air show had been rained out, but in the end I got to see something much more impressive and exciting.
Today I found that, in fact, when the going gets tough they really can hack it. And I'm not talking about tough like, "Mom asked me to empty the dishwasher, and then Dad wanted me to mow the lawn" tough.
We went to check out an air show today at the nearby Air Force base. It's a bit cool for this time of year, and there was some rain in the forecast, but we didn't think that major precautions against bad weather were necessary. We drove to the base, parked the car, and walked at least a mile to the show entrance. It was overcast and breezy, and some of the kids in shorts complained a bit. We basically ignored them, pointed out the cool aerobatics going on overhead, and mostly enjoyed ourselves.
After we had been watching the show for a while the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse. A full-on thunderstorm arrived with high winds and heavy rain. We had three sweatshirts for the seven of us. It was hopeless to try to stay dry or keep enjoying the show. With droves of other people we began the long walk back to the car, being pelted and lashed with rain that soaked us through and even stung at times.
Given the reaction I might get at home for simply asking someone to put on their shoes or set the dinner table I half expected at least some of them to crumble to the tarmac as the rain poured down on us, and declare that they could not face the walk back to the car. They did no such thing. It was a miserable experience, heads down, squinting eyes, fighting through wetness and windchill that made the 49F temperature feel more like 35F. Amidst the physical discomfort, and even pain, they soldiered on resolutely.
There were a few words of encouragement spoken, but no cajoling or convincing was needed. They seemed to understand that our plight, though not particularly serious, was also not going to go away by complaining or throwing tantrums. The only way out was to take care of ourselves, even if that meant marching through the freezing rain. They seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation without our intervention, and rose to the occasion resolutely.
As we sat in the car, laughing over how cold and soaked we really were, we waited for the heat to thaw us out. Long before the heat made me feel better physically, my heart was warmed to see how resilient they all were, and from thinking back on the way they had just helped each other through shared trial with such grace and strength. The air show had been rained out, but in the end I got to see something much more impressive and exciting.
Friday, May 18, 2012
You're Not Helping!
I recently sat down to watch Stargate with the kids. It has been a long time since I watched it, and it hasn't aged particularly well, but the kids like Star Wars and I thought it'd be something new and different for them.
For those who don't recall the plot line, it follows an Egyptologist who gets mixed up with a secret Air Force project to reactivate a device unearthed in Egypt in the 1920's or 1930's that they think will facilitate long-distance space travel.
There is a fair amount of subtitling in the movie. The opening scenes follow French archeologists working in Egypt, so all the initial dialog is in French with subtitles. Later the Egyptologist and his Air Force teammates travel to a distant planet where everyone speaks a dialect of Egyptian, including the supreme alien overlord that they have to overthrow. Any time the natives or the alien are on-screen everything has to be subtitled.
Of the five youngsters viewing with me, only two are proficient readers, and dialog can go by pretty quickly, especially if you have any interest in anything else happening on-screen. Because of the crowd's limited reading skills I started reading the subtitles out lead early in the movie. I thought it would be helpful.
A minute or two into a particularly dialog-dense section of the alien planet scenes my four-year-old turn to me mid-narration and with great exasperation exclaimed, "Dad, stop reading! I can't hear the movie!"
I think she knew what I was doing - she knows enough to recognize a few words on her own, so she was aware that those words on the screen had some sort of meaning. I was intrigued that despite the fact that what I was saying was very much applicable to the movie, it was not a vital part of the movie she was watching. Admittedly, Stargate is rated PG-13 (I did some selective editing with the fast-forward button through some sections) so it's not really geared for her intellectual level. Even so, she was engaged by much of what was going on, including - apparently - the non-English dialog.
She didn't have to understand the meaning of what everyone was saying because she wasn't really trying to take in the whole movie the way I would. On the contrary, her goal was to take in the overall experience. If people want to speak in another language then we should let them, and not worry so much about what it is they're saying.
It makes me wonder what else is going on in their young brains that I might never glimpse without inadvertently ruining some experience while trying to be helpful. Pretty fascinating stuff, I bet.
For those who don't recall the plot line, it follows an Egyptologist who gets mixed up with a secret Air Force project to reactivate a device unearthed in Egypt in the 1920's or 1930's that they think will facilitate long-distance space travel.
There is a fair amount of subtitling in the movie. The opening scenes follow French archeologists working in Egypt, so all the initial dialog is in French with subtitles. Later the Egyptologist and his Air Force teammates travel to a distant planet where everyone speaks a dialect of Egyptian, including the supreme alien overlord that they have to overthrow. Any time the natives or the alien are on-screen everything has to be subtitled.
Of the five youngsters viewing with me, only two are proficient readers, and dialog can go by pretty quickly, especially if you have any interest in anything else happening on-screen. Because of the crowd's limited reading skills I started reading the subtitles out lead early in the movie. I thought it would be helpful.
A minute or two into a particularly dialog-dense section of the alien planet scenes my four-year-old turn to me mid-narration and with great exasperation exclaimed, "Dad, stop reading! I can't hear the movie!"
I think she knew what I was doing - she knows enough to recognize a few words on her own, so she was aware that those words on the screen had some sort of meaning. I was intrigued that despite the fact that what I was saying was very much applicable to the movie, it was not a vital part of the movie she was watching. Admittedly, Stargate is rated PG-13 (I did some selective editing with the fast-forward button through some sections) so it's not really geared for her intellectual level. Even so, she was engaged by much of what was going on, including - apparently - the non-English dialog.
She didn't have to understand the meaning of what everyone was saying because she wasn't really trying to take in the whole movie the way I would. On the contrary, her goal was to take in the overall experience. If people want to speak in another language then we should let them, and not worry so much about what it is they're saying.
It makes me wonder what else is going on in their young brains that I might never glimpse without inadvertently ruining some experience while trying to be helpful. Pretty fascinating stuff, I bet.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Lego Taxonomy
I recently undertook, with my family, a project I actually scorned a few short years ago. Growing up I had many Lego sets, and standard practice was to:
Fast forward 25 years. I now have three avid Lego builders living with me (my three oldest), and they have jointly accumulated a respectable stockpile of bricks and sundries. A few years ago my wife suggested that we sort the Legos by some system into more manageable containers than the large storage container they all occupied. I told her that was a terrible idea, that I never needed such organization and I loved playing with my Legos.
Well it turns out I just hadn't reached critical Lego mass in my youth. I would attribute this mainly to the fact that I was just one boy collecting sets, the next younger boy being six years my junior, so he barely started getting into Legos as I was moving on to other interests. My three oldest, on the other hand, were all born in a span of three years. The end result of this birth spacing is that they have received, and pooled, many Lego sets over their lifetimes, and the sheer number of bricks makes them very hard to store in one container or to play with effectively. It's a lot of work to dig through a large, deep container for that one perfect piece to complete your model.
So, I ate my words, and two weeks ago we settled in for a three hour project with the whole family sorting Legos in the kitchen. I was not sure of the best approach at first, but we just dug in and I winged it as best I could as the whole family immediately started asking "Dad - where does this one go?"
We settled on division by color, grouping sufficiently similar colors into one container, with a few exceptions. The only false start we had was that light grey and dark grey soon outgrew their designated container, and so they were moved into their own individual buckets. We also ended up having to find some larger containers for certain colors. It was interesting to see what colors dominated by quantity. In my original Lego collection red far outweighed any other color, which I believe was due to the early generic builder sets I first received. I suppose if I'd had more space sets at that time (early 80's) I would have had more blue, or yellow had I had more castles, but that wasn't the case. These days, at least for us, it would seem that all the Star Wars sets have made their mark, as black, light grey, and dark grey all top the charts.
Here's what the project looked like, splayed out over the kitchen counter:
In the end we had 15 containers, broken out as follows:
- build each model as it was received
- play with it for a while
- break it down and add its component parts to the Lego bucket
Fast forward 25 years. I now have three avid Lego builders living with me (my three oldest), and they have jointly accumulated a respectable stockpile of bricks and sundries. A few years ago my wife suggested that we sort the Legos by some system into more manageable containers than the large storage container they all occupied. I told her that was a terrible idea, that I never needed such organization and I loved playing with my Legos.
Well it turns out I just hadn't reached critical Lego mass in my youth. I would attribute this mainly to the fact that I was just one boy collecting sets, the next younger boy being six years my junior, so he barely started getting into Legos as I was moving on to other interests. My three oldest, on the other hand, were all born in a span of three years. The end result of this birth spacing is that they have received, and pooled, many Lego sets over their lifetimes, and the sheer number of bricks makes them very hard to store in one container or to play with effectively. It's a lot of work to dig through a large, deep container for that one perfect piece to complete your model.
So, I ate my words, and two weeks ago we settled in for a three hour project with the whole family sorting Legos in the kitchen. I was not sure of the best approach at first, but we just dug in and I winged it as best I could as the whole family immediately started asking "Dad - where does this one go?"
We settled on division by color, grouping sufficiently similar colors into one container, with a few exceptions. The only false start we had was that light grey and dark grey soon outgrew their designated container, and so they were moved into their own individual buckets. We also ended up having to find some larger containers for certain colors. It was interesting to see what colors dominated by quantity. In my original Lego collection red far outweighed any other color, which I believe was due to the early generic builder sets I first received. I suppose if I'd had more space sets at that time (early 80's) I would have had more blue, or yellow had I had more castles, but that wasn't the case. These days, at least for us, it would seem that all the Star Wars sets have made their mark, as black, light grey, and dark grey all top the charts.
Here's what the project looked like, splayed out over the kitchen counter:
 |
| Lego Sorting Is Fun! |
In the end we had 15 containers, broken out as follows:
- Black [Sweater-box size] (this is the most numerous color)
- White [Sweater-box size]
- Light Grey [Sweater-box size]
- Dark Grey [Sweater-box size]
- Red [Sweater-box size] (includes regular, pink, and dark shades)
- Green [Gallon size] (includes regular, light, and dark shades)
- Yellow [Gallon size] (includes regular and gold)
- Brown [Gallon size] (includes brown, orange-brown, and tan)
- Orange [Gallon size]
- Blue [Gallon size] (includes blue, light, dark, and purple shades)
- Odd / Transparent [Gallon size] (includes transparent, chrome, and speckled)
- Doors and Windows [Gallon size] (includes frames, doors, sashes, and shudders)
- Mini-Figures and Accessories [Gallon size]
- Wheels and Axels [Gallon size]
- Technic [Gallon size] (gears, struts, rods, etc.)
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Digital Photography - Saving Feelings Everywhere
The other day I found myself explaining the concept of film photography to my nine-year-old son. We received our first digital camera as a gift the day he was born, so his entire life has been spent sans film. The concept was totally foreign to him. "You had to get pictures from a store, and it took how many days?!?"
This caused me to reflect on the number of pictures we take thanks to the digital age. Growing up I went through 2 or 3 film cameras. My first was a Kodak Disc that I got when I turned 8. Through the years I probably went through only 1-2 discs, or rolls, of film per year. So over 14 years I'd estimate I took no more than 1,000 photos, probably far fewer.
We all know how great digital photography is. No need to extoll its virtues here. Even so, it's amazing to see what a difference a little convenience makes when you can take a virtually unlimited number of pictures, and there's no cost to "develop" them anymore. I think these numbers speak for themselves.
I think this chart has a couple of takeaways. One is that there's an unmistakeable growth trend here. Judging by that cumulative quantity, if I live another 40 years I will have taken over 126,000 photos by the time I die. Who needs that many pictures? Maybe it's time to reign in the old shutter finger.
Another takeaway is to consider the blessing of digital storage. Had I taken and developed every single one of these photos as a 4"x6" print, and stashed them in photo storage boxes, I'd be storing 24 boxes (12"x8"x5") full of prints. That's 6 2/3 cubic feet of space! No thanks - I'll stick with keeping my 70 GB of photos conveniently on my pocket-sized hard drive.
The most encouraging thing about these numbers is the per-capita counts over the years. When our second son came along my wife was deeply concerned with him getting as much attention, as many photos, as big of a scrapbook, etc. Equality was king. Conventional wisdom, and experience from our family lives growing up, suggests that parents have less time to focus on later children. At one time this translated to a deficiency of photos featuring younger children in the family.
Luckily for us, the digital age has overcome this parental failing. Here's the breakdown of the average number of photos per person over the years:
Even as the family has grown, each child's share of the family photo stash has not shrunk. Future crises of self esteem? Averted!
This caused me to reflect on the number of pictures we take thanks to the digital age. Growing up I went through 2 or 3 film cameras. My first was a Kodak Disc that I got when I turned 8. Through the years I probably went through only 1-2 discs, or rolls, of film per year. So over 14 years I'd estimate I took no more than 1,000 photos, probably far fewer.
 |
| The Awesome Kodak Disc |
We all know how great digital photography is. No need to extoll its virtues here. Even so, it's amazing to see what a difference a little convenience makes when you can take a virtually unlimited number of pictures, and there's no cost to "develop" them anymore. I think these numbers speak for themselves.
 |
| That's a lot of photos! |
I think this chart has a couple of takeaways. One is that there's an unmistakeable growth trend here. Judging by that cumulative quantity, if I live another 40 years I will have taken over 126,000 photos by the time I die. Who needs that many pictures? Maybe it's time to reign in the old shutter finger.
Another takeaway is to consider the blessing of digital storage. Had I taken and developed every single one of these photos as a 4"x6" print, and stashed them in photo storage boxes, I'd be storing 24 boxes (12"x8"x5") full of prints. That's 6 2/3 cubic feet of space! No thanks - I'll stick with keeping my 70 GB of photos conveniently on my pocket-sized hard drive.
The most encouraging thing about these numbers is the per-capita counts over the years. When our second son came along my wife was deeply concerned with him getting as much attention, as many photos, as big of a scrapbook, etc. Equality was king. Conventional wisdom, and experience from our family lives growing up, suggests that parents have less time to focus on later children. At one time this translated to a deficiency of photos featuring younger children in the family.
Luckily for us, the digital age has overcome this parental failing. Here's the breakdown of the average number of photos per person over the years:
- 3 family members = 550 photos / person
- 4 family members = 636 photos / person
- 5 family members = 707 photos / person
- 6 family members = 1,142 photos / person
- 7 family members = 1,710 photos / person
Even as the family has grown, each child's share of the family photo stash has not shrunk. Future crises of self esteem? Averted!
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