Leif's life-long best bud Taro received a miniature air hockey table for Christmas. Although his mother, like me, worked hard to find knit slippers, Waldorf dolls and other natural toys, this farking plastic sporty-toy overshadowed his other gifts. She stated for months afterwards "But I didn't order a sports-loving son!".
So Leif and Taro played some air hockey throughout the winter. Then they both got their own sticks, and started playing in the yard. Then the Playoffs started, and Taro got a copy of some Hockey News magazine. Now they're reading stats and documenting their favorite players on little lists they make at night. We discover that you can watch the Playoffs online, and we're in. I'm on-board for whatever they're into, be it raising pests as pets or playing Lego all day. So this was an easy shift. We made Leif's special Macaroni and cheese on game night, invited Taro over, set up chairs all around the computers, and let loose. The whole neighbourhood could hear us when the Penguins scored that first goal. To prep for the game, Leif and Taro and Hannah made their own hockey gear, following Taro's lead, out of wood, wool and cardboard (see? using nature still fits in!). During the breaks, they went and played hockey outside until I called them in for the next period. We were riveted right up until the final seconds, when Fleury, sweet little Frenchman, deflected a shot on goal in the final 6 seconds, pushing the Pens to Stanley Cup victory for the first time in 14 years. We'd already googled the Cup itself, how it originated, how it got taller as they added more names, how many times the Montreal Canadians were on it, that the teams get to keep it for the year (really? said the kids), how violence is not a 'natural' part of the game (when another player held Crosby up by only his knee on the boards, sending him off the ice for an injury, and no penalty was given), that it was not aways there, and how no other sport condones anything close to what hockey allows lately. We are all looking forward to the Olympics to show them how hockey can be played with only skill, not skill and gratuitous bullying.
Pics of them getting ready to play:
Can I rave about Radio Flyer for a minute? Well, I was going to. We have a red metal RF wagon that we found free by the side of the road. It's rusty, but like anything well-made, it still works just fine. We use it for Leif's paper route. Recently, when 3 too-big children tried to ride in it all at once, the one plastic component, the wheel spokes, broke. I was bummed. I figured it was irreparable. But I called RF, and in 5 minutes, had a new set of wheels ordered for exactly our wagon model. Woohoo. I told the kids, about how quality manufacturers, good customer service, etc was a gem these days, and linked it to the crap customer service we've had from companies that outsource their manufacturing to countries with crap labour laws and cheaper wages. Our bike trailer comes from Alberta, the kids pj's are made in Washington. Even though by now there's little you can actually get that's still made in N. America, we do try. And so I was miffed to discover that Radio Flyer shut it's US plants in 2005 and now manufactures all their metal items in China.
A decade ago when all this outsourcing was really in the papers, I was firmly against it. I heard often from my elders how I was being Utopian, that really, the jobs were such a benefit to these workers in China, Indonesia, etc . . . did I want to deny them this chance at the American dream we all share? And it was hard not to lay into these well-spoken adults in my community, to point out the total lack of altruism in these corporate moves. They were not moving their factories to 'help' the poor workers, to spread 'the Dream'. They were doing it for money, pure and simple. Across the border in Mexico, slack pollution and labour laws made it an easy choice for hundreds of companies that had previously been working in the US. Ditto for China and the other Asian countries now providing us with all of our toys, clothing, computer and telecommunications needs. Oh but wait! There's a problem now it seems? These money-saving steps and slack pollution and labour laws are resulting in lower-quality goods you say? Lead in toys? Plastic chemicals in Pocky? Weird flu's travelling from animals to people, possibly on the food we ship from far away to nearby? Good heavens, what have we done? Did you know Costa Rica now beats Hawaii for pineapple sales? Tough luck for the Hawaiians I guess, but woohoo for Costa Ricans right? Come on folks. Do the math.
Yes, this still pisses me off, over a decade later. Back then, in the 90's, there might have been a chance of reversing this trend that is entirely based on greed. People tried to effect a change, to get the word out. Trying to buy Canadian/American, protesting against Nike and Kathy Lee Gifford. I remember being in NY on 2003 and seeing a huge banner ad on the side of a building slamming the Gap for it's labour workers in Indonesia. But still, the notion of it being 'better' for us consumers to be able to buy cheaper goods, therefore putting our dollars back into the local economy . . . oh man , I can't even type that without wanting to laugh or throw up. The 'local' economy was the toy store that used to be up the street from us, that shut down when Wal-Mart arrived. The sushi bar that thank god still is up our street. Friends who used to work for Telus and Safeway, who earned good livings and took their money and spent it on local festivals and fundraising and food grown here in BC. But they've since been fired, my Telus service calls now come from Calcutta and the service at Safeway is the worst crap ever. Oh but for the highest prices in town, no less.
I've recently learned about a group finding a different way to 'give the dream' in poorer countries. www.girleffect.org is a group that gives the basic means for a business to poor women and girls in Africa. What's that, they just give it to them? They aren't trying to make money off them at the same time? How can this be? The 'American Dream' is all about greed isn't it? Well, they got my money for sure. And the next time they get my money, it'll be for the soccer-team training for girls that they offer. And this is a perfect time to share another article I read recently, that ties in all the outsourcing with the value of learning to work with your hands. If you have a job online or on a computer, that another country might be able to do for you . . . you just might be fucked in a few years. But no one can outsource a gardener, a hairdresser or a plumber. Food for thought.
Want to talk about Hannah? Let's, because she's just so rockin'. We had a garage sale recently, as part of our clean-house-so-we-have-less-to-clean program. Hannah felt this was a perfect opportunity to have a cookie sale (our neighbours recently had a lemonade stand, which essentially was only frequented by us, but hey, we all got juice). She made her own signs, complete with pictures of her rice krispie squares (seriously, they are the hardest things to make! So sticky and messy, and the waste of the marshmellows and cereal that goes into it, vs. the tiny pan of squares that comes out? Bah!) and told each customer "They are rice krispie squares with marshmellows inside". The marshmellows were key in her view. In this pic you can also take note of her new haircut. She deduced that long, thick hair is too hot, and brushing it is too hard. So we went short and she loves it.
In a bizarre turn, our efforts to clean house netted us just enough money to offer a deal on the drum set being sold at the yard sale across the street from us. Hannah was smitten, though when I offered her a horse instead (trying to illustrate how far-fetched such purchases were) she got upset because it was too hard to choose. Good lord. Now the kid's room is dominated by a shiny red drum kit, and I relax daily to the random beats of the 3 kids who each have their own set of drum sticks.
Her tent caterpillars are now all in their own cocoons. In a week or so they will hatch as moths. She has liked having them as pets, though the amount she can ignore them has proven to be a key thing. If she'd had a pet rabbit or something it'd be dead by now.
Ivy is hilarious. It is hard to convey how she's changing, but I'll try. She is so, articulate? Chatty? Neither of those are right, but I'm at a loss for the word I mean. Some examples:
Leif and Hannah are discussing which movie to watch. Ivy is nearby building with blocks. They agree on a film. Ivy gets up and says "Can I watch it with you guys? Can I watch too?".
She calls me from somewhere in the house, needing help. I say I'll be right there and start to move in her direction. She then yells "Oh, I got it! Never mind Mommy! Nevermind! Thank you Mommy! Thanks!".
She gets ignored a lot, which is lame. She'll be talking to the kids or Kit, asking a question or telling them about her day, and on her third repeat I'll say "Hey guys, she's talking to you!". She'll stand on a chair and hold their shoulder and peer into their faces, telling them her gem about the fish she saw, or the shoes hanging on the power lines. And she'll tell each of them her news individually. She insists, of course, on doing many things herself. Her car seat buckles, her stroller buckles, if you're drawing she wants to draw too. Pretty normal behaviours. But still so sweet and determined, dammit. She is on cloud nine right now because she got her own Ivy-sized hockey stick, and asks "Can I play hockey with you guys?". Last night she lay in bed with Leif, and shared with him this golden nugget:
"Leifer, when I'm taller I'll get a boy-head and I'll put it on."
Then after some discussion with him about being older and taller she says : "Actually, I'll keep my girl-head when I'm taller."
When she goes somewhere she says "Here I go" or "Here I come". Will I be like this when I'm senile? Don't blog about it, my darling children, if I am. It'll be cute and sad for you but awful for me. Though I won't know it or care . . . okay, as long as you buy me Turtles IN THE BOX, I'll agree to most anything by then.
This week I we played restaurant one day for lunch. In truth, I operate a restaurant every day for these guys, but on this day I decided to 'make it fun'. I had them each write out their order and promised to try to mimic it as closely as I could, given what I had on hand.
Leif ordered 'Leif's mak an cheese' (sound it out guys, it's macaroni & cheese)
Then he wrote me a list of his favorite foods:
Hannah ordered: ' oitmeil kukes, etomame (and) stroberes'
(oatmeal cookies, edamame and strawberries)
And here is her list of favorite foods. Can you read them?
And Hannah ordered for Ivy : ' pect yogrt' (peach yogurt)
Okay, watching kids learn to spell is fantastic! I remember the first word Leif ever wrote. He was way young, maybe 4.5? and he wrote in the sand with a stick GRL and said Mama, I wrote girl! And he had. He had all the key hard consonant sounds for that word. I never corrected his spelling over the next 4 years, and now I do not correct Hannah's. Why? They make the effort to solve a problem on their own, and you can either notice the effort and the wicked results, or you can say "sorry, you're wrong". Which one do you think will make them NOT want to write anymore? Yep, criticism when you're just learning sucks. And frankly, our current system of spelling is due to a gov't mandated spelling reform from back in the 30's. Think about it. How come when I read novels written by British authors it's perfectly alright for them to spell tire as 'tyre'. And that my spell-checker prompts me to fix words like 'neighbour' and 'colour'. Up until 100 or so years ago, we had few standards for spelling at all. you got your point across and that was it. Your class was likely indicated in your spelling, as it would be in your diction. But you still got your point across and there was little issue with it. Over the past years of explaining to the kids why something is spelled how it is (when they ask me, not because I'm correcting them) we've collectively deduced that our language is just farked up. Take 2 minutes and read a small bit of why our language is so crazy and follows no guaranteed rules %100 of the time. And if you'd like to read how they've tried to fix the way we spell things in the past 100 years, look here.
Adding extra letters because it looks better? Basing your language and spelling on French, then changing allegiances decades later, but keeping the French spellings? using 'y' because it looks more Greek even though an 'i' would follow current rules better? I always knew it was confusing for new Canadians, but for those born here it's basically a list of rules that make no sense. Yes ours is a culture that uses your grasp of spelling as a sign of your intelligence. No I'm not advocating sending my kids out into life clueless about how to correctly communicate in a society that judges your overall smarts by your book smarts alone. Yet when you look back at the history of spelling, and read old texts that had the now-deemed-wrong spellings in them, it hopefully makes you pause to consider our current stringent rules on spelling, on state-mandated rules for spelling and the exhaustive amount of time spent correcting it in school. And yet, the number of adults I have dealt with, who have any profession from news anchor to nurse to lab tech, who mix up their there-their-they're's, and threw/through's . . . the list goes on. They are the pinnacle of gov't schooling? It's odd to make such a big deal about something that seems to continue regardless of the effort put into fixing it. I hope that because Leif and Hannah (and Ivy) will learn how to spell in this way, not by rules but by sight and overall immersion, they will end up with a far better grasp of the intricate and sometimes ludicrous ways we spell things.
I'm going to stop here. There's just so much to talk about it'll never get up if I don't just cut things off right now. I'll add the rest to next week.
C
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