Ready for new beginnings - an update after 5 years!

 

So many changes since I last posted. Our family photo taken by the super talented Michelle Craig shows how time has flown. Not that long ago in this blog I announced Rocky's first birthday, now he is 13! Our sweet Winter is eight. Alex and Dani are 19. Ben is 17.  Jack is over 50 and I'm headed there soon, 48 this year (my dad and I approve of this really nice number...) and I'm feeling good about life at this juncture. I enjoy teaching full time at UHS which also gives me a chance to see Ben at school each day. Jack is juggling many hats as usual, serving as medical director for his department as well as seeing tons of patients and staying patient in countless meetings. Alex and Dani are both enjoying being in their own cities since last year when they began freshman year of college. Dani is a fast-talking, fast-walking, fast-typing New Yorker. Alex is soaking up the sun and music and art to be found in LA while working hard at her  psych degree and an art double major. She has learned about photography and storytelling while working on the school fashion magazine. Dani is passionate about long-form journalism and has a job creating AI language models (LLMs) as she takes a gap semester this fall. In addition to training our future computer overlords, she is volunteering in Queens and Manhattan to help kids learn photography and complete their college apps. Ben successfully completed his college apps and we are waiting to hear where he will spend his college years. Academic team is going well as is his job at Mathnasium and he is a much appreciated peer tutor at school. Robotics season is about to begin in January. 

Our family continues to enjoy spending time together, playing games, hiking, eating all sorts of food, and playing with pets. We are down to five plus an aquarium of fish. Sparky the axolotl was our most recent addition. Taz the conure still squawks his way into my heart (most days) while munching on fruit. Humphrey is going to get a new aquarium soon and is doing well despite needing some antibiotic injections this month. 

I'm thrilled we can always find plenty to discuss and laugh about when we are all together around a dinner or game table. I hope this blog can continue to capture snippets of our busy days for many years to come. I'll try not to take such a long break before the next post! 

Spotlight on Alex

***So I guess I never published this... started it back in 2011 and (ironically, thanks to the first line of the post) never finished. But the goal is to capture memories, so I'm just going to publish what's here. So there. ******

"Finish what you start." It's another resolution, for this year and beyond. So, in March of 2011 I wrote a spotlight on Dani, and now it's Alex's turn, and then Ben's. They grow so fast, I want to capture it all! And I've captured a lot in pictures, and on post-it notes, and in notebooks around the house. Now it's time to digitize it.

AlexPalex. Or as she has told us to call her - Lexie (it hasn't stuck, to her chagrin). Alex is a downright SILLY kid. She loves to silly-sing her own silly songs, hear silly bedtime stories about herself and her silly siblings, make up silly rhymes, make silly dress-up combinations, and generally be a source of laughs, which is understandable since her sister has a really good one. Dani's laugh is joyful, uninhibited, and LOUD. Alex knows just how to get her going. Alex is very ticklish and loves to try to tickle us back. When she is serious, she is very serious, and has a hard time shaking it. But when she is happy, she is completely silly giggly funny fun. She makes hilarious but true observations about the world (Me: "It's been a long day." Alex: "Mom, every day is the same length. It's not like one day is 20 minutes and then next 3!")

Alex loves to draw and make books, especially about horses, dancers, and unicorns. But she also loves to paint. We haven't fit in as much painting time at home since Kindergarten began, but when Alex does get to paint, she pumps out painting after painting with her watercolors. She doesn't want to draw her images beforehand, she just creates with the paint. Her favorite brush is a very small one, to make thin lines.

2020 -- A new decade, new goals

Our house is filled up by the energy, ideas, emotions, and wit of two teenagers and a preteen. All the kids are very active technology users. We hear so many scary things about kids and technology and social media and online predators and all sorts of fear inducing combinations. It's a bit overwhelming to me, if I'm honest. On the one hand, we tell our kids that they should use technology to make their lives easier, better, more rich. We set them up with email addresses and access to the school portal and we make them check those things constantly to make sure they stay on top of homework and announcements. But we also tell them to stop spending so much time on screens. I hate this push and pull on their time and emotions. And I hate my new role as the phone/computer police. I miss peeking over their shoulders at a photocopy, drawing or a book to see what they are working on. The computer is their main tool these days. So our house has set rules about where devices can be used, to make sure the computer is truly employed for homework when it's supposed to be, rather than the allure of an online game or social media (which we've banned for now). I miss having the problem of what to do with all their drawings and homemade books and lego creations. I love my BIG kids, don't get me wrong. Life is interesting and they are amazing people. There are just aspects of our life with little kids that I miss. Things I didn't realize would go away so soon.

In light of asking my kids to watch their use of technology and be wary of putting details into the interwebs that are not safe, I am distancing myself from social media outlets and also making my blog completely private. It will not pop up on feeds and, as you know dear reader, it requires permissions and logging in. This step makes me feel better about the details and pictures of our lives that are posted here. Funny enough, I'm also hoping it reminds me to use this blog again. Without FB to help me capture memories and share ideas, maybe I'll turn to blogging again. I know - very 1990's of me.

So the girls turn 13 in 10 days. My first thought is to at least blog about each kid on or near their birthday each year. So stay tuned! Maybe I'll actually follow my goal and post!

Rocky turns 1

We had an amazing weekend with our extended family this Memorial Day weekend down at Lake Cumberland, KY (Thanks Mikey, Holly, Anita, George, Julie, Ada, James, Mom and Dad! What good bunch!) and I'll post fun pics and stories from that soon. Upon returning home, we enjoyed a day that the kids have been talking about for months - Rocky's first birthday. The kids have memorized his birthday yet still stumble to tell us the date of Jack's. Poor guy. It took a lot of treats, training, sleepless nights, reading, and patience to get us here but we finally have a one year old dog who is generally good at taking direction, is always good natured, and is good at making our kids girls turn to a squealing mess of baby talk (and he makes a good playmate for Ben who loves to tug of war and throw him a ball). The kids' new nickname for him (I am not making this up) is "Mr. Stoney-Woney Covered in Fur and Stuffed with Cuteness." Nuf said.

Today was fun

After over 5 hours of intense gardening both at the old house and the new, I'm just not able to come up with a clever headline for today's post, nor can I find a way to string together today's memories in a coherent way. There's just stuff to post before I forget it. Entertainment value, be damned.

I worked a lot on the yard at the old house today. Hopefully all this cleaning up will help a future owner feel like they can just move right in without too much work. A big yard IS a lot of work, but there are so many benefits. Spring is my favorite time at that house - the columbine at the front are beautiful. Our ducks and even the frog are back.

Alex informed me today that she and Dani have "Brain Communication" and Ben shares this with them as well. It's an ability that only very special siblings have, which is why Uncle Mikey and I do not have Brain Communication. This ability allows them to send each other messages, like "when one of us is going somewhere with Daddy and the other stays home, and if something exciting happens or the plans change, we can tell each other about it. It also works even after death, like if one of us dies first, we can still tell each other things." She also explained they can play games with each other via Brain Communication. Bummer that Jack and I don't have it - we'd save a lot of time and money on texting and board games!

Alex and Dani recently began taking horseback riding lessons. Alex has also mastered riding her bike without training wheels this past week. I haven't gotten any pics of her doing it yet. Here's a cute shot of the girls at class before they start to groom their horses. Notice that they are smiling. They LOVE riding lessons. It's the first activity they both agree is great.

Ben has been having a rough spring. Our new home has lots of flowering trees, dust from construction, and fields of dandelions nearby. This has also been one of the worst springs for people with pollen allergies. Put this all together and you get a Ben who had trouble sleeping and was generally irritable with a runny nose and itchy eyes. Yet despite feeling crummy thanks to nature, he insists on climbing trees and playing with bugs. That's my boy. (It helps that he's been so irritable that he lost his phone/iPad playing privileges for a long time - it gave him plenty of free time to play outside.)

This evening was the block party in our new neighborhood. I had been looking forward to meeting families with kids and we did pretty well - there are at least a few potential friends for Ben and I hear there are girls around but many didn't make it to the party. My bunch all surprised me by finding kids to play with after dinner. Usually Ben makes a friend wherever he goes but the girls hang back. Tonight everyone was running around, doing cartwheels, throwing balls, and generally enjoying the other kids. Dani even proclaimed, "I like having parties for no reason!"

Tomorrow, Jack and I plan to attack the garage so he can actually park in there soon and so it's not such a pit of despair to me. Bring on the shop vac and dust rags - all the contractors cut wood, tile, and stone in the garage this year to avoid being cold outside, so the dust levels are ridiculous.

Catching up? I can try.

2012 kicked my butt. Big time. I seriously think it was the most exhausting year since we had twinfants in the house. How Many “Firsts” And “News” Did The Wei Family Have In 2012? A LOT. I wrote up a big long list for a holiday card that never got produced, and even just editing out the "insignificant firsts" took waaay too much of my 1am time. I have forgotten more of 2012 than I would like to admit simply because I didn't blog about it as it was happening. And the same is going on right now in 2013. Occasionally a fun memory gets logged to Facebook, but I rarely go back and put it all someplace more permanent and accessible years later. If blogging or journaling doesn't become a daily event again, more adorable moments will be lost forever. How will Jack and I reminisce when we are in our 80's if I can't pull up a record of the hilarious things the kids used to say? My crappy memory certainly won't do it for me. We won't be able to chuckle over the fact that Dani feels she is "an under-height first grader" or that Ben wondered tonight, half asleep and calling out for mama, why his foot hurt until he drank a glass of water. And we won't be able to remind Alex that she used to get very perturbed at the idea that she is a picky eater, when her 20 year old self can't get enough of cauliflower and asparagus and fish that doesn't have ketchup smeared on it. Memories get made every hour around here, and more of them are going to end up recorded. Luckily Jack has been taking videos of the kids talking for a few minutes each week. Maybe I'll post a few soon. They are very cute. 

That is all for tonight. Tomorrow - the list of craziness that happened in 2012. 

Here are the kids at The Hundred Acre Wood, a beautiful nature/sculpture park at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. We visited for the first time (which should have happened YEARS ago) on April 27 with Gramma and Opa.

 

 

Making Up Jokes

We have creative girls in so many ways. Alex loves to make up songs (and rhymes!) and Dani's latest craze is making up punny jokes.

Q: What do you call a dancing raspberry?
A: A Jazzberry!

Q: What do you use to power an electric cake?
A: Batter-ies

Q: What do you call blueberries when you first buy them?
A: Newberries

Q: What's a horse's favorite fruit?
A: Strawberries!

Q: What do you call nuts that are very old?
A: Oldmonds

Q: What does an alien who is feeling really hot say when it sees a vent?
A: That's the coolest thing ever!

Q: What do you call a fat pumpkin?
A: A plumpkin!

Q: What do you call a flying weapon?
A: A soared.

Q: What's a plant's favorite food?
A: A Tree-t

Q: What's the only color that doesn't tell the truth?
A: Lie-lac

Q: What's the only golden food?
A: Nuggets

Q: What is the most colorful fruit?
A:  A crayon-berry

Ben's jokes are a little different...

Q: What do you call a spoon that is not a spoon?
A: A fork!

Q: What do you call orange juice that is not orange juice?
A: Water.

Q: What do you call a thing that has a head, a body and two legs?
A: A person

Q: Why was there a hole in the ground?
A: Because someone digged it!

But he came up with this one last week:
Q: What is the only country you can store things in?
A: CANada

He's getting there!

Alex has had her share of funny jokes too.

Q: Why did the cheetah not play fair?
A: Because he's a cheetah!

Q: What is the only edible festival?
A: The Steak Fair

Q: What's the only fruit you can sit in?
A: A Chairy!

Dads = the best

There are two dads in my life - my own dad and my kids' dad. Both are amazing men. So here's a toast: (Raising wine glass) To Jack and Dad. I love you both more than words. But here are a few.
Ten Things I Love about My Dad
1. He loves playing around with mechanical things, and is curious about how they work
2. His hugs
3. How he still wants to hold my hand, even when I’m 34
4. How he seems to have forgiven me for all the times I didn’t want to hold his hand when I was a college kid
5. He values hard work and loves family life
6. When he fixes something 5 minutes after we’ve told him it’s not fixable
7. He plays with his grandkids so long that he falls asleep on the floor next to them
8. He just can’t resist kites, and he helps the kids to fly them
9. The moments when I realize how much I am like him – it means I’ll never feel like he’s completely gone
10. He is kindhearted, sincere, friendly, and beloved by so many especially ME!