It’s a really cool program. FLL was created to introduce kids to how fun and interesting science and technology can be through the gateway drug of Lego. Teams have an adult coordinator and sometimes a teenager helping out, but the kids have to do all the programming, all the project design, etc. There are three parts to the competition:

1. The robot game: What catches everybody’s eye with this tournament. The kids learn how to program a Lego robot to run around a game board and do various tasks, all within two minutes thirty seconds.
2. The project: The kids do research on the theme of that year’s FLL Competition and then present their findings to a panel of judges, whether through a skit or some other way of presenting it. All of the team members need to participate in this section, so it can’t just be one or two kids who enjoy talking.
3. The FLL Core Values: the driving force behind FLL is not just “science and tech are great” but “What’s this all about, anyhow?” The kids have to learn the core values and be able to discuss them intelligently with judges.

Every year there’s a real-world theme to the whole competition: this year’s is called “Food Factor” and it’s about food safety and contamination. Sophia’s team did a field trip to a sushi restaurant, to the middle school’s cafeteria, and to a local butcher’s shop to learn about food handling practices and concerns. Both kids’s teams came up with pretty cool real-world products (Simon’s team’s product is so cool I’m trying to talk the other families into doing a Kickstarter for it, but so far no takers).

Because the kids have to figure out how to program the robots and have to design the project and then present everything to judges, it’s really clear right away which kids have done the work and which had the adults doing the work for them. It does no good for adults to do the work (something I wish some parents at the kids’s schools would learn, SIGH), and one thing you learn right away is that these kids can do it. They might not do it well. They might not do it professionally. But man, some of these kids are amazing. (One kid on Sophia’s team was so into getting his robot to do its run correctly he worked in the basement of the team leader’s house for 4 hours on his own one night.) And if they’re not good at one thing (programming) they might be good at another (video editing).

This program is getting so popular several schools around us have FLL classes, with a teacher and all of last year’s Lego tools and lots of experience. These kids are well-taught and have great resources and are kicking our kids’s asses in the competitions. Both Simon and Sophia’s teams advanced in the first round, back in November, but I’m expecting both to get smoked in this coming round. (This isn’t just me; the other parents I’ve talked to feel the same way.) It’s like pickup teams facing the Yankees; of course the pickup teams have a chance.

If your kids are at all interested in science, technology, computers, robots, or Lego, and they’re between the ages of 9 and 14 (US/Canada/Mexico; 9 and 16 elsewhere, I guess), check it out. It will help you a lot if you can get people who’ve done it before involved, because for a newbie parent like me much of what was going on was baffling.

This month’s book is The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis. None of the kids has had a chance to read the book yet, so today we had a discussion of some of the background of the book, which concerns a young girl in Afghanistan who pretends to be a boy in order to support her family. Since we didn’t know anything about the book, we did some fun stuff, like marking off a 10-foot by 10-foot square in the middle of the carpeting to show the size of the place the protagonist lives in, and we discussed the subject matter.

This is what I learned:

• Some kids hadn’t heard of Afghanistan.
• None of them knew where it was, although Sophia came closest with “near India.”
• Some kids had heard the word “Taliban.” They didn’t know what it meant, though.
• A few knew there had been a war there recently. Even fewer knew that the US had been involved.
• A couple knew that the predominant religion there was Islam.
• Almost none of them knew anything about the conditions for women there.
• Almost all of them tried the hummus I made, and several tried the dried fruits that another mom brought.

We had a discussion about the title. None of the kids knew what the word “breadwinner” meant. We discussed why bread was slang for money, and why bread is so important. (I’m guessing not many of these kids have had to recite “Give us this day our daily bread” too often.)

I have no idea how atypical I was as a child (okay, okay: I was very atypical), but I watched the Evening News with Walter Cronkite every  night with my dad. I didn’t always understand what “Vietnam” or “energy crisis” or “M2″ meant, but I had some exposure to the news. A lot of these kids — from very well-informed, very successful families — are not getting this. I only point this out not to rag on these kids (they’re in 6th grade, after all) but to point out that it’s never too early to start talking to your kids about world events. Or to use big words like “breadwinner” with them. They were really, really interested! They want to know this stuff!

I have high hopes for book discussion next time.

Just sayin’: sometimes living sixty minutes outside of San Francisco feels like I live on the dark side of the moon. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live twenty minutes from the nearest town all the time.

We can see the stars here. There’s enough light pollution that we don’t see a huge sky full of the Milky Way. But we made out Orion and the Big Dipper.

As we were out walking the other night, Sophia said, “This is why they call it silver moonlight.”

I looked around, and indeed, everything was bathed in a bluish-silvery moonlight. Enough light to walk by, although I did step on a few rocks (it was an unpaved road, after all).

I wonder how many clichés (like “silver moonlight”) we’re going to rediscover. In a world where certain natural things have pretty much disappeared — the moon has never lighted anything in the Bay Area in my memory — it’s astonishing to run across the truth of old phrases I’ve certainly never thought twice about.

You were a joy to read… before twitter. Now, not so much. Seriously, have you not better things to say?

Well, the Twitter is basically a way to have something to say, frankly. I suppose everyone who’d be interested in my tweets have probably added me to their own Twitter lists, so I could probably stop posting them here. (I’m DianePatterson on Twitter, btw, in case you’re looking for me.)

But to answer your question: at the moment I haven’t found a particular raison d’être for this blog. Many of the things I’d like to talk about really aren’t fair for me to talk about much (for instance: my kids—yeah, I know, I win some kind of Mom-points for finally figuring that out) and others are just…well…

Writing: I don’t talk about it’s going with my novel on submission in New York, mostly because there’s nothing to report. I’ve done my part: I wrote the best novel I could, I got the best agent I could, and off to the races they go. I have received a few rejections so far, and while they’ve definitely been of the “Wow, that’s a glowing rejection” variety, the key word for me is not “glowing.” There’s no use trying to interpret what they meant: it’s just a “no.” And the only thing to say about that is “Next!”

I also don’t want to dwell endlessly on what’s happening there until such time as something happens. I wouldn’t do it if I were on a job hunt, and I’m not going to do it here.

If it sells, however: just try and shut me up.

I’ve finally (finally!) started work on something completely new. Although I ran it past one guy I know and he said, basically, “What’s different about that?” (Which is the key to sticking lightning in a bottle, story-wise, of course.) And that’s made me wonder about to make it that much more different. But we’ll see as I go.

TheaTUH: My full-length play, The Guest House, starts rehearsals tonight for staged readings the first weekend of October. I don’t know what to expect. Same deal as with the novel: I wrote it, I sent it in to the world, where other people like directors and actors will make something of it. Fly, little play, be free.

Politics: I’ve told Darin that if McCain wins it’s time to seriously talk about moving elsewhere. If I’m willing to brave Canadian winters, things are serious.

Honestly, how far have we fallen as a nation? We joke about torture, and the orders emanated from the top. Not a few “bad apples” (remember that knee slapper?), but from the highest authorities in the nation. There’s a story in today’s SFGate about how a group of historians and activists are trying to move now to prevent Dick Cheney from destroying government documents. What the fuck? Does anyone really understand what the collapse of Freddie and Fannie means, on top of the money we’re throwing down the rabbit hole in Iraq? (Amongst other fabulous blogs, you should check out The Cunning Realist, by a conservative economist who likens our current situation to the drastic days of the Weimar Republic, and yeah, he’s enough of a wonk to give examples why.)

I’m not going to go into why McCain is such an amazingly horrible choice as President. If you don’t know, you’re uninformed, and you should work on changing that right now.

No, I’m not a big Obama fan. (For one thing: FISA, motherfucker? What in the hell does the Administration have on all of these people to make them vote for that? And who here is the slightest bit shocked that I’d imply that?) But yeah, he’s better than the alternative.

Kids: Kids in first grade are supposed to choose books at their own reading level to read aloud to parents. Simon picked his book on Evolution, which just goes to show my 6-year-old is smarter than Sarah Palin.

Sophia is taking taekwondo, ballet, and swimming, and she asked if she could add gymnastics. (I said, Uh, no.) Given that she doesn’t eat, I have no idea where she gets the energy. I would suspect photosynthesis, except she certainly doesn’t eat vegetables.

Fitness: I restarted my gym program after many, many months off, and I love being back there. There’s something about heaving that piece of iron repeatedly that makes me say, “Yes!” I can already feel a difference not only with how my jeans fit (nyuk), but in how well I can keep up with my friends when we go running. If I can start keeping up with them all the time, that will be kewl.

I don’t want to post any progress I’m having either with the weights or the weight (ha), because, well… I’m incredibly judgemental: lots of people post on the 3fatchicks boards with a weight-loss thermometer in their signature proudly proclaiming how much they have to lose and how far they’ve gotten so far, and when the loss is all of 1.5 pounds, I want to say, Why don’t you wait until you have a number that’s statistically significant? I know this probably says more about me. But really: isn’t this blog all about me?

Movies: They suck. Seriously, they do. I actually cut back on our date nights not because of the economy (Darin’s a Director, now, btw, so he’s doing fine), but because we kept wondering what the hell we should go out and do. The last few movies we’ve seen have been: Hamlet 2, The House Bunny, Tropic Thunder, and The Dark Knight. I’m sure there was something between Tropic Thunder and The Dark Knight, but it made little to no impression on me, clearly.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly has been our go-to guy for movie reviews since forever, but after Hamlet 2 (which he gave a B+ and deserved more like, I dunno, a D, and that’s only because the “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” sequence was pretty funny) he’s lost about 40,000 of his Killer Movie Critic Cred points.

The House Bunny wasn’t under the impression that it was high art, but it couldn’t figure out what the hell it wanted to be: comedy, farce, parody (yes, these are all different things). And often it would change mid-scene.

Tropic Thunder was deeply hilarious in many ways, but as Ken Levine astutely noted, Pretty much only to Biz people. And a few weeks later I only remember the opening trailer with Downey’s character and the scene where Ben Stiller clearly doesn’t get that Steve Coogan has been blown to bits in front of him.

The Dark Knight: I was underwhelmed. Since apparently it was actually the second coming of Homer and Shakespeare’s love child, I’ll leave it at that.

  
“You want me to go to bed WHEN?”

The school is supposed to give the kids a healthy lunch. So what that
there’s fact and sugar or chemicals. It’s food. We’re a working
class family that can’t afford to fix a good lunch for the two dollars I give
the kids for school lunch. The kids wouldn’t eat fruits and veggies anyway. When am I supposed to make these lunches? I work. Besides that it’s not my responsibility to go out of my way to make lunches that the school must give by law.

To which my only reaction can possibly be:

My brain reads “So what that there’s [fat] and sugar or chemicals” and it ‘splodes a little. What on Earth do you mean, So what? Are you the one in charge or not? Are you the one modeling behavior for your kids, or are you not? On what planet is it not your responsibility?

(In case you didn’t look at the webpage in question, in response to this declaration, the Possummomma shows her how to fix a good, healthy lunch for under two dollars.)

And with fruits and veggies: I honestly can only guess she’s never given them to her kids. My kids won’t eat everything — they won’t even eat all the things they used to eat. (Sophia the girl who could eat an entire bunch of asparagus when she was two won’t even touch the stuff now.) But we still offer them a variety of foods and they have favorite fruits and veggies despite being picky.

One of the key things I decided on early was that I was not going to be a short-order cook. There are a few choices for breakfast on school mornings — not as many as I’d like, but we tend to be rushing around in the morning and I keep the menu simple. I offer them a few choices for their lunch: they can pick what kind of sandwich they want or a thermos of soup, plus a fruit and maybe a snack. For dinner, I serve one meal. They can eat some of what’s put on the table, or they can pass and wait for breakfast in the morning. Strangely enough, they usually end up eating some or all of what I’ve served. Not always, and probably not with as much variety as I’d like. (For instance, they’ll usually have some of whatever starch I serve.) But they know they’re not getting anything else instead.

One good book worth checking out on the subject is Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes. And a quick glance through Amazon shows a number of books on the subject: Brown Bag Success: Making Healthy Lunches Your Kids Won’t Trade, The Top 100 Recipes for a Healthy Lunchbox, and The Healthy Lunchbox. Several of which turn out to be available at my local library, so I’m going to pick a few up and check them out.

I know it can be a pain in the ass to find out everything about everything, but please: this is your body, and your kids’ bodies. You take charge of what goes into them, okay?

I reminded them of why it’s important to get a good night’s sleep. ”This morning I had two sleepy kids I couldn’t get out of bed for love nor money,” I said.  

Sophia’s mouth dropped open. “You didn’t offer us money!”  

As soon as I could make myself stop laughing, I sent her upstairs to bed. 

And this plan, almost unbelievably, seemed to work out just fine.

My current obsession has been Doctor Who. The third season has been playing here, and I love it so much that, while I can pass on watching anything until a few days have gone by, Friday night I am right there in front of the TV. (Albeit, after it’s TiVo’d—can’t stand commercials.) I have recently become so into it I a)joined NetFlix (nope, hadn’t been a member before) and b)queued the first two seasons to watch at home. I’d never seen any of the Christopher Eccleston ones, and we missed about half of season two.

The day my first NetFlix movies arrived Sophia had a friend over, and they were off playing in her room, while Simon stayed with me. He, of course, wanted to play World of Warcraft, but it wasn’t his day. So I said, “Hey, wanna watch Doctor Who with me?” We snuggled on the couch and I put the first disc in. And it was hilarious—FTW: “If you’re a space alien, how come you sound like you’re from the North?” “Lots of planets have a North!” (Eccleston has a northern British accent you could cut with a chain saw). Simon thought it was the greatest thing ever.

The next day Simon said, “Can we watch another one?” and Sophia said, “Another what?” So she sat down to watch the Doctor and Rose get into various messes.

The day after that, when I got home with the kids, the first thing they asked was, “Can we watch another Doctor Who?” No one mentioned World of Warcraft. It was somewhat blissful. Of course, now my DVDs have run out and I have to get the next set post-haste.

But when the Doctor’s in the house…no Warcraft! Yes!

(My God, the time goes fast.)

My birthday’s in August. I never had a party. Darin’s birthday is right before Christmas. He really never had a party.

Simon is tired of preschool. As in, we have a fight every day about going. Of course, when it comes time to get him at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to go home, he wants to stay and play. I’ve tried to explain that preschool is all about the playing and kindergarten (which he wants to go to NOW) is all about the school. He doesn’t believe this. Sophia has snack-recess AND lunch-recess, so clearly going to school is the best choice.

He has also taught himself to read.

We’d noticed he was picking up a few words here and there. For over a year his favorite word has been EXIT, because he could read it on signs everywhere. But lately the pace of acquisition has picked up, until finally he started reading his favorite Blue’s Clues book to me. And he isn’t reading from memorization either (he’s had several books completely memorized for a while now). Now I point to a word and he can either read it or begin to sound it out. When he hasn’t a clue he shakes his head until I help him out.

He isn’t quite so thrilled with reading that he’s doing it on his own, but he is clearly pleased with himself to have figured it out.

No wonder he wants to be in kindergarten NOW.

I still think he’s going to be surprised when it’s not all recess.