Team Nodlings

I'm feeling good, so I finally followed through on a project from last year.  I had the idea to make the kids Team Nodlings jersey t-shirts so they can watch football with me and just generally be awesome.

I put their Names and Numbers on the back and shirt sleeves (in birth order) and Nodlings on the front with my Nod of Approval logo.

#4 Nub is the one face-up in case you've lost track!

Super fun, I can't wait for them to try them on!  Whaddaya think?

Best Thing About Being A Catholic Dad

The best thing about being a Catholic Dad is telling your kids they're going to Confession, and when they do, they thank you afterwards.

Boo-ya!

What's your best thing?

Overheard In My House

The 8-year old neighbor's kid was watching Nod-girl wash some pots and pans after a party.

Neighbor kid: Why are you washing all those pots and pans?

Nod-girl: Because I'm 10 years old and when you're 10 you have a lot more responsibilities. So you should enjoy being single digits while you can.

The Politics of the Bus Stop

It's only 6 miles to the Catholic school, but the Nodlings still ride the Catholic school bus with half a dozen other kids from a 10 mile radius. By definition, this means that they don't ride the public school bus. The other thing they don't do is wait at the public bus stop.

This has a very curious effect on them from an otherwise very pleasant neighborhood: they are somewhat isolated from the other neighborhood kids. They don't have the shared experience of going to the same school, riding the same bus, or standing on the curbside with their peers on a cold January morning.

The bus stop is also where the Moms and occasional Dads are forced to congregate making idle chit chat. It's the place where play dates and casual invitations get made for when Johnny comes home from school or soccer practice lets out. Unless you're otherwise involved in common activities or have the benefit of a tight neighborhood community, you're just another wave-across-the-yard face in a suburban island enclave.

Now there are a lot of great things about Catholic schools and the community they develop.  What they lack in convenience, they make up for with depth. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of seeing my eldest son, Wynken, graduate from St. Mary Marvelous. They had a week long graduation celebration the likes of which I have never seen at any level - elementary, high school, or college. Everyone from the Kindergarteners to the eighth graders to the staff to the parents joined in with laughter, tears, reminiscences, and a deep sense of connectedness.

The friendships parents make once they start having children tend to be the parents of their kids' friends. Left to their own devices, kids in a neighborhood will play together in shifting packs that resemble floating crap games with looser rules. Kids are good that way; it's the parents that tend to have the hang-ups. But at the end of the day there is still a little bit of the you-don't-go-to-my-school division even at the kid level.

But that's changing, perhaps by Design. With a Catholic high school tuition being out of our reach (see Forty Percent of Awesome) Wynken is headed to public school. In addition, a new family with 5 kids has just moved in next door.  We've only known them a week, but all the Nodlings and the neighbor's kids have flowed back and forth between the two houses non-stop. Woo hoo!

Not only do they have 5 kids, but the ages match up perfectly with the Nodlings. And in a stunner, their oldest is a boy with Asperger's -- just like Wynken -- and they will be going to the same school. As we struggle to deal with our new reality of a boy with social and executive functioning challenges, God has seen fit to put this family in our lives.

How cool is that?

That In Latin

It was a catch-as-catch can dinner night, so I told the kids to go ahead and pray then eat.

They chose to do it in Latin, because 1) they know how, and 2) they think it's cool.

After grace, 5 year old Nib exclaimed, "We're praying in Alladin!"

Smirk.

You Look Marvelous

Blynken is nearly 12 years old and she has a special interest in sewing and making her own clothing.

Long past the time when other girls have lost interest in playing "dress up" because they are too "grown up", Blynken relishes the chance to put on a fancy cape and direct her younger cousins in this week's fashion parade.

For several years now any spare scrap of fabric she could find has gone to make patchwork clothing: dresses, skirts, handbags, and shawls hand stitched together by none other than she. Blynken also insisted on wearing her creations around the house, but we drew the line for Mass.

Well all that is changed. She got several yards of fabric for Christmas and has been taking lessons with the sewing machine with Grandma Nod and with our neighbor who is a seamstress. They tell me she has some talent because she is deliberate and takes her time when making her stitches. Mrs. H tells me that Blynken "gets it" when the techniques are explained to her and she is able to say why the technique is used.

She has already made one dress that she was able to wear to Church and is working on another pleated skirt. The best part is that she naturally chooses modest designs, so there is nothing fight about. We looked up some designs online and her first question was, "Why are those dresses so short?" Nevertheless, Blynken is determined to design her own clothes.

Now I'm a guy, so I know very little about sewing and even less about fashion. Things like A-lines, hemming, basting, gathering, double seaming and back-stitching mean nothing to me. But if my daughter wants to design her own modest clothing, then -- by gum! -- I'm going to help her do it.  As a computer guy my first thought was: there's gotta be an app for that.

Turns out there is. I found this software called Marvelous Designer which is like AutoCAD meets Fashion Design.  As a geek, I found this really impressive. Check out this video.


See the way the cloth drapes naturally using real physics and gravity? See how easy it is to adjust the hemline up or down, take in the sides, or add a ruffle? Looks like those 3D modeling engines are good for more than just Quake, World of Warcraft, or Skyrim. She could be designing and sewing her own prom dress in a few years' time.

Now we could get this software for only a few $$$ (cough cough - you've got to be kidding me). Ah, never mind, we used paper and a few colored pencils instead.

How Is This Comfortable?

I love to sneak up on the Nodlings and catch them in their natural habitats.

The picture quality stinks because I was laughing too hard and only had my camera phone, but Nod-girl is listening to some music while planking across the arms of two couches.

How is this comfortable?

Not to be outdone, Dab likes to play in the laundry basket -- cartwheels are a normal way of getting out of a basket, right?

Nub likes soccer and football, but sometimes he is unwilling give up on the play, which leads to this awkward pose ...

Overheard In My House

Apropos of nothing, four year-old Nib turns to me and says,

Why do we only get one life?

Um, well ... somebody's been playing too many video games.

Thou Shalt Not Compare

The first Commandment of raising school-aged children and grades is: Thou shalt not compare one child with another.  

Everybody knows this rule and follows it diligently because otherwise No-Good-(TM)-can-come of-it and children-only-end-up-with-bruised-egos-and-otherwise-avoidable-misunderstandings.

But I'm breaking that rule to illustrate a point. Hey, the Nodlings don't read my blog and you probably don't either. If that makes me a bad parent, so be it.

I don't compare them to each other when their report cards come home, I always take them individually and review them against their prior performance or what we know to be their ability. They are still young enough that they get an "effort" grade along with the academic grade. I value that more highly than the letter grade they earn. As long as they are reaching their potential, I'm satisfied, and they get praise for that.

But what exactly is their potential? How can I help each one if I don't know? Short of an IQ test, we have to rely on experience, report cards, and periodic test scores. There is one set of tests they take annually that gives me a glimpse into their abilities: the ACT (or in our case TerraNova testing).

The results show up in neat little bar charts and percentiles. The percentile scores indicate that they scored better than X percent of everybody else who took the test for that grade level. That gives me an idea of their potential.

By graphing the results, I wanted to see the shape of their abilities. (Hey, I'm a picture guy; that's the way that things make sense to me.)  That hopefully will help me to understand each Nodling, the strengths and weaknesses.

Now -- without exaggeration -- I have at least one genius and one mentally retarded child. Everybody else falls somewhere between that 40 and 140 IQ. That's quite a challenge sometimes. (I'd say the kid with Down Syndrome is easier to deal with than the genius, although the techniques are similar -- but that's another subject.)

Here is a graph of the 3 older Nodlings. The percentile range for "average" is 25-74, and "above average" is 75-100.

Both Blynken and Nod-girl have two scores in the "average" range and everything else is "above average".  Wynken has top-flight test scores almost across the board.

What is striking to me is that Blynken's spelling and language mechanics scores are markedly out of range of the rest of her abilities -- hmm, that might mean a learning disability (or a kid who likes to rush through certain tests). On the other hand, those scores are almost exactly average -- nothing wrong with that. Her report card grades in those subjects are actually very good; her other subjects tracked closely with her abilities.

Nod-girl's test scores and her grades were in perfect sync. That's my girl!

Wynken's grades underperformed his test scores by a consistent margin -- which is what happens when you don't turn in your homework in a timely fashion. (Not like he didn't have a constant reminder from us.)

Parenting a child with a high IQ is interesting. It's not that he thinks he's smarter than us -- he actually is. What he lacks is wisdom and the ability to put that knowledge to its proper use. Sorry, kiddo, you still need parents for moral guidance, experience, love, support, etc., etc. ;-)

The challenge is to know each one's abilities and encourage them to reach their potential. In the final analysis, however, no one is going to ask to see your diploma to get into Heaven. If we can do that for our kids we will have succeeded, graphs or no graphs.

Overheard In My House

To Wynken after showing him the bridge over which he could have crossed the river:

Who was right, and who is wet?

Did I Pass?

I have passed seventh grade twice, fifth grade thrice, and third grade four times. And I'm doing it all again.

That is to say, I've successfully completed these grades once for myself, but they (you know who you are) are compelling me to do it again and again.  It seems inevitable, that my children will come home with a project.

I hate projects.

And because almost all the Nodlings go to the same school ... they're the same projects over and over again.

Now of course the children do their projects all by themselves. Of course they drive themselves to the store to get their supplies. Of course they do all their own research without asking for assistance, and of course they are all wizards on the computer the way the school system requires them to be these days. (Of course they all have their own computers and printers -- silly you, for asking.)

Harumph.

That being the case our oldest, Wynken, is the latest Nodling to have a project -- and not just any project: The Seventh Grade Science Fair. Da Da Da DUM!!

I hate the Science Fair most of all. I studiously avoided it growing up by focusing year after year on either 1) dinosaurs, or 2) salt crystals. (Hey, look -- dinosaur salt crystals!) It's not that I hate science (it's rather interesting), it's that I hate Science Fairs: the pressure of competition, the stupid poster boards, the flimsy models, the lame ideas (are seventh graders really supposed to come up with an original idea?), the awkward reports, and so on.

After having Science Fair Idea Block for a couple of weeks solid, Wynken actually found a cool looking (and mercifully simple) topic called Hero's Fountain. Hero (or Heron) was an ancient Greek mathematician and engineer who did a lot of cool experiments.

Hero's Fountain is a "standalone fountain that operates under self-contained hydrostatic energy".  Huh? Wha-?  Basically it's a 3 tier fountain where you pour water in the top and gravity makes it go down and come spurting out the top again (almost) endlessly.

He came up with the idea and the hypothesis, did research, built a model, conducted the experiment, and typed up the analysis.  I made it pretty.

Now I know that everybody says that you should let your kid do his own project and let his work stand on its own, etc. I get it. I do. Individual achievement. Learning (sometimes by failing). Helicopter parents need not apply.  BUT (you knew there was one) since Wynken has an executive brain function deficiency despite being a near-genius (more on that later), he would still be formatting the title if I didn't intervene. (And I want my computer back.)

This meant that even though I wasn't "doing" the project, it took up a lot of my time (and Mrs Nod's). I had to (literally) stand over him to get him to keep typing, look up stuff, (STOP looking up stuff), get supplies, use the hacksaw and the hot glue gun, and make sure he was following the already-laid-out-for-you outline provided by the teacher.

When it came time to make the display board, he showed me the Wikipedia image of Hero's fountain he wanted to use and we discussed what information he wanted to attach to it.  So I took those things and combined them with a little Photoshop magic into an infographic. I admit, it was a little over the line (but just a little).  It's hard not to want to help your kid, especially when he struggles. And he did work hard. It just took forever.

We went from this:

Wikipedia image of Heron's Fountain

To this:

Wynken's image of Heron's Fountain

Here is the actual fountain he built:

So ... did I pass?

House of Nod Celebrates Double Time

The House of Nod rejoiced today with not one, but two, celebrations.

First my brother, Shoe, and his wife, Girl Friday, baptized their precious daughter Babs, wiping out Original Sin and bringing her into relationship with God. I love a good death and resurrection!

The priest said that all of our kids were the "loudest respondents he's had at a baptism in a long time" during the liturgy. I guess that's good, hm? (Although I fumbled the first 'And with your Spirit'. Doh!)

On the way there I was asking the kids about baptism and Nod-girl at first said it was when we were "concealed with the Holy Spirit", but then got it right. It's hard to drive and laugh at the same time!

Grandma Nod hasn't perfected the art of bi-location, so she was sadly absent. The reason: my sister K-Lo was finishing up 36 hours of labor to bring her first-born son into the wide world. Good job, sis, and congratulations! My sister, her husband, and two Grandmas are all understandably exhausted.

No pictures yet - hopefully we'll get to meet the little tyke tomorrow - so I'll provide one of my own. I dub thee: the Artful Dodger.

Overheard In My House

The Nodlings have been passing around a cold which causes them to be a bit stuffy.  To combat this, I've given them each his own squeeze bottle of saline to help dry the sinuses.

Four-year old Nib is in a copy-cat phase with her older sisters.  So she asked for her own bottle as well.

"Daddy, I don't want the gasoline to fall out of my nose."

No, you don't want that.

It's A Girl!

Congratulations to my brother, Shoe, and his wife, Girl Friday, on the birth of their first born daughter, Babs!

Scheduled for near Christmas, baby Babs kicked her water out and her way into the world on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. How cool is that?

Born in the wee hours of the morning, she clocks in near 7.5 lbs and 19.5 inches, with long narrow feet and a head full of dark hair.

From all reports, Girl Friday and Babs are recovering well and it's love at first sight. A sleep-deprived Shoe was reported as saying, "Um, yeah."

Babs joins an extended family of Nods -- she is the first Nodling at Outpost 4, but the 7th girl and 10th Nodling overall.

As they say over at Outpost 2, "We're just doing our part for Western civilization."

Ain't it the truth? "Hello, Nurse!"

And Then There Were Shingles

My project has had me working long hours, including overtime.

The volunteering I've been doing for Wynken's Boy Scout troop had me burning the candle at both ends. As my stress level goes up, my muscles get tighter and tighter and my exercise quotient drops near zero making the problem ten times worse.

Now I have knots in my neck, shoulders, hamstrings, and lower back. Even my knots have little knot buddies that multiply. Now my neck is pulled and I can't turn my head to the left or hold the baby in my left arm.

In the midst of my pity party, Mrs. Nod came down with a case of Shingles. Because when I'm not available, the full weight of running the household falls on her, stress rises, sickness ensues.

[WebMD] What is shingles?

Shingles (herpes zoster) is a viral infection of the nerve roots. It causes pain and often causes a rash on one side of the body, the left or right. The rash appears in a band, a strip, or a small area. Shingles is most common in older adults and people who have weak immune systems because of stress, injury, certain medicines, or other reasons. Most people who get shingles will get better and will not get it again.

What causes shingles?

Shingles occurs when the virus that causes chickenpox starts up again in your body. After you get better from chickenpox, the virus "sleeps" (is dormant) in your nerve roots. In some people, it stays dormant forever. In others, the virus "wakes up" when disease, stress, or aging weakens the immune system. It is not clear why this happens. But after the virus becomes active again, it can only cause shingles, not chickenpox.

You can't catch shingles from someone else who has shingles. But a person with a shingles rash can spread chickenpox to another person who hasn't had chickenpox and who hasn't gotten the chickenpox vaccine.

So, yeah, she's got that bad movie sequel: The Return of Chickenpox.  Her eye is swollen half-shut with blisters and itching and general oozing nastiness. (But only on the left side -- shingles is like that.) So if it doesn't get into her actual eye/optic nerve, then she won't go blind. (How's that for the sunny side?)

For complicated reasons, the girl Nodlings only lack the vaccine against ... Chickenpox. Worse yet, baby Dab spends 95% of his time glued to Mrs. Nod's side. If he gets it, he could get very, very sick.

We'll know how bad it's going to be after the incubation period in about 2 weeks (just in time for Nod-girl's First Communion).


Oy! Ora pro nobis.

Rituals Of The Season

Today was Wynken's first soccer practice of the season. 

He's got the same coach and almost all of the same boys as last season, which is a bonus. They're generally a good lot.

Unfortunately, it is unseasonably cold with temperatures in the 35F degree range. I stood around with a couple of the other dads making chit chat though clenched teeth. Meanwhile, I'm thinking: why do we do this crazy social ritual when every one of us would rather be waiting in the car with the heat on full?

Eventually, one of the dads who was in thin cotton slacks bolted for the comfort of his car. I'm wondering now: how come I wasn't smart enough to do that? Ah, the pressure of social graces.

The boys were fine since they were running around.

World Down Syndrome Day

My boy Nub has Down Syndrome. Read The Nub of the Story for my conversion on this topic. I've got some pretty strong feelings on the matter.

I won't give a dime to the National Down Syndrome Society because they refuse to affirm the dignity and worth of DS children prior to birth. Their attitude is symptomatic of the public at large.

Mark W. Leach at Public Discourse uncovers some of the reasons why.

Each year, March 21^st is World Down Syndrome Day (WDSD). The date 3/21 was chosen as a representation of the genetic cause of the condition, a triplicate of the 21^st chromosome. WDSD seeks to raise awareness of a genetic condition that may very well diminish to the point of disappearing. This is due to the prenatal testing sham.

Read the whole thing here.

The Best Blogging Buddies Evah!

Recently we at the Nod household received baby shower gifts for our latest Nodling, Dab. The fact that it was unexpected, unmerited, and a complete act of kindness only serves to accentuate its worth.

Check out these onesies -- they're awesome! Dab is gonna wear them with pride as he says his rosary and learns about the saints.

Mrs. Nod and I are extremely grateful to Rebecca (aka the Mom), LarryD, and anyone else who may have had a hand in it (you know who you are!). Somehow you made an obscure guy with a little blog and a big family feel very special.

Thanks!

Rule 42

After I told her for the 42nd time to eat her oatmeal, 3 year-old Nib responded, "I want to get big, Daddy. But not in the ceiling."

Reminds me of this from Alice In Wonderland.

The King then read from his book: "Rule forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court."

"I'm not a mile high," said Alice.

"Nearly two miles high," said the Queen.

"Well, I sha'n't go, at any rate," said Alice.

Shake It Up

We have all been staring at the same four walls for about 3 weeks now due to illness. On Saturday, I threw everybody outside whether they wanted to go or not. Everybody.

Mrs. Nod confided to me: "I'm mad at you". Join the club, signups are over there. (But then she took a nap and felt much better.) In fact, everybody felt better just to be soaking up some Vitamin D and running and playing. One thing is for certain: nobody in this family will be signing up for a 5-year trip to Mars in a tiny capsule.

Dab made his long awaited debut at Mass this weekend, despite the rain. It always amuses me to see the people that we barely know or don't know at all come out of the woodwork to congratulate us on the baby. Not that I'm complaining about it -- I'm pleasantly flattered.  I guess we're just that visible, even when we're doing nothing and sitting quietly in the back.

I decided to shake things up a little more on Sunday afternoon by declaring that we would be making our own pizza from scratch. My mom used to do this when I was growing up, and it's not that hard especially if you own a pizza stone -- which I do.

Now the Nodlings are that kind of crew that historically turn their noses up at anything but cheese pizza. I don't listen to those mewlings and force them to eat all kinds of crazy dishes that I make up -- and they love.  I won't force Blynken to eat mushrooms unless they're really well mixed into something, because she looks like a cat horking on a furball, but other than that I generally don't make exceptions.

But today was Pizza Day. We made French bread style for lunch as a warm-up, and then we got out the rolling pin and made pizza dough for dinner.

I asked them to pick pizza-like toppings and they could put in on the pie themselves.  Well! This cheese-only crowd put on pepperoni, black olives, green pepper, garlic, minced onions, mushrooms, and oregano.

Nib was hilarious! Every time I'd shift the pie to the left or right to work on the next part, she would jump down, move her step stool to my other side, and clamber back up so that her nose was level with the pizza. "Daddy, I help you?"

For our second pie we made deep dish which included ham, pineapple, green and red bell pepper on half. My half was more exotic: pepperoni, olives, feta cheese, mushroom, diced tomatoes, garlic.

They ate it all up with relish! Um, no, not relish-relish, they just liked it a lot. I had five kids hovering around my elbow as we mixed and rolled pizza dough and clamoring to be allowed to put on the next topping.

Hmmm, I wonder if that would work for other kinds of dinners? Hmmm.