New Hampshire Mountain Mommy

#Homeschoollife, Week 2

Well, we kind of crash-landed in week 2. I was exhausted and underprepared, having just raced the Overland and dealing with the mixed emotions of this year’s event. It made me a less energetic educator and a much less patient mom!

Nevertheless, we made it through. Theo continued working through his unit on community, talking about how we use money for wants and needs. I set up a little “store” in the school room… Guess what he went for first???

Learning about money and budgeting! If only iPhones were really a onetime cost of $20.13…

In response to my store, Charles set up his own, much cooler store selling amplifiers and band gear in their bedroom.

Inspired by a trip with Uncle Jordan earlier this summer!

Math included a review of comparing numbers. So far, Theo hasn’t met anything in his math work that’s been too challenging for him, but I’m enjoying a different approach and think it’s really rounding out their understanding. Because they’re both bright, they don’t tend to need endless repetition to understand a concept, but I like that they get to come at each lesson from several angles.

We also started our spelling work. The boys are so different about spelling. They’re both diligent when we’re working specifically on spelling, and they both remember phonetic “rules” for regular words, but Theo is much more likely to remember/use correct spelling once he’s used a word. Charles opts for the fastest option, regardless of whether he could spell it correctly — if he’s able to edit later, he catches and corrects his mistakes himself. I just can’t figure out what the block is on spelling correctly the first time!!! In any case, Theo is a lot more patient with the process, and I was pleased he didn’t fight me on our “rainbow copying” work!

Crazy to think he was just learning to write letters two years ago!!!

Theo has been pretty bummed that his curriculum so far hasn’t included any science [it’s coming!!!], so he’s joined us in Charles’s plants & soil unit. On Tuesday, we learned about plant reproduction and dissected some flowers. “Embryo” turned out to be a challenging word to say, but we loved learning about seeds and seed formation, and comparing the different flowers from the garden.

Snapdragon with its inner workings exposed.

Charles made a video talking about the parts of a Lima bean seed:

We also made maple bars while working through some assignments about “Sugar Snow” from Little House in the Big Woods. It’s been a trip down memory lane for me to reread this alongside Charles, and to think about the differences in how he experiences it and how I did as a child. [Stay tuned for a Little House post… I’m reading The Birchbark House alongside it and think they should be read in tandem!]

While we were waiting for them to bake, Charles did some research on bears, and dictated an acrostic poem!

On Friday, Dad was home and we took a family mountain bike ride. Charles had grown so much since this summer that his feet touched his handlebars!!! It was beautiful riding weather, and the boys got to try out their new water bottle holders from Class 4 Designs. Instant hit!

It was a great end to a long week.

I’ll leave you all with this video that sums up Theo’s work…..and the general level of enthusiasm in our house!!!

Homeschool Begins

Year #3 of our homeschooling project started this week. The kids were complaining constantly of “boredom,” I was going stir crazy and needed some organization in our day, our sitter was off to college…. Getting going seemed like the best way to combat all these things.

We are using Moving Beyond the Page for the first time this year. We’ve loved Bookshark for the past two years, but wanted to mix things up and try something new. So far (2 days in), it’s been a smashing success. The kids love how much hands-on there is; I love how much discussion we have; and the activities are things the kids and I might have done organically before, but having a structure so I’m not doing last-minute web searches for good projects is a blessing for us all.

I’m hoping, this year, to use the blog to do more in-depth recaps of our “This Week in #homeschoollife” Instagram posts. They’re important because they remind me, when I’m feeling bedraggled and exhausted at the end of the week — but unsure what learning actually took place — that we’re making forward progress, and that this crazy experiment is working, worthwhile, and FUN!

As we’re plunging headfirst into [cool, refreshing?] Homeschool ’22-’23, I just want to list some things that I try to keep at the top of my brain to make it through our weeks intact.

(1) I AM AN ADULT AND THIS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY. I read this years ago in some book about parenting toddlers, and I repeat it at least ten times a day when I am losing my ish, worrying about ER visits and wondering if my kids are actually sociopaths.

(2) If we don’t finish all the projects/lessons today, there is always tomorrow. I am incredibly type A. I like to check all the boxes and get all the things done. I don’t (as an adult) enjoy procrastination, last minute changes, or “flexible schedules.” I want to get it DONE when it is SCHEDULED. But the truth is, we are not on a 180-day school schedule, and if we need to speed up or slow down or skip a project or spend some extra time talking about a concept, it’s OK. That’s a benefit of homeschooling. Teachers in public/private school have days they don’t make it through their lesson plans, too.

(3) Teaching is part of parenting, and I am my child’s natural teacher. The kids’ preschool teacher gave me this pep-talk in the middle of a grocery store when I was going into our second year of homeschooling and no longer had the, “We’re just homeschooling because of COVID” fallback to catch me or anyone else. They are learning just by being with me and doing things day-to-day. They know how to schedule and budget, how to read a map and road signs, how to meal plan (and cook some things!). Fractions come pretty easily to Charles not just because he’s good at math, but because he’s measured things with me his whole life. (In fact, this week, he decided on measurements for a science experiment, measured them out himself, and set the whole thing up independently of me.)

(4) Did I mention that I AM AN ADULT AND THIS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY? If some dirt gets spilled, someone colors outside the line, or we get sidetracked using unit blocks to build patterns / castles / jewelry for our stuffed animals… it’s ok. Deep breath. Because there is always tomorrow. And those unit blocks are at least easier to see on the carpet than Legos.

(5) We need to sit and read together. It’s been how we calmed down since Charles was 3 months old. Theo’s 2nd day of school was 1000% more successful than the first because we snuggled on the couch with a Richard Scarry book to kick off our discussion of People in the Community.

(6) Challenge builds character, problem solving, and intellect. Sure, it was nice that Charles could do all his work independently last year; that he read all his assigned reading in twenty minutes at the beginning of the week; and that I didn’t have to listen to him moan about writing in a journal. But now he gets to learn how to look up vocabulary and read critically.

(7) Structure and schoolwork feed our creative brains. The kids have been a flurry of activity these past two days: inventing new games, discovering new ways to add to their ubiquitous stop-motion-animation; helping each other with their work and chores. They’ve both written newspapers and drawn maps outside of school time. They’re engaging ME in their imaginative play. I feel like we’ve done more in the past two days than the entire summer… even though we did SO MUCH this summer!!!

So cheers to this school year! We’re going to make it through today, and tomorrow, and then I’m going to focus on my race for a few days, and then we’re going to start soccer! And piano lessons! And we’re going to… NOT PANIC because we are ADULTS and this is NOT AN EMERGENCY!!!!

Death by Berry Containers

Two days ago, I wrote a post about how much I looooooved our Lenten discipline of reducing our household waste. There is a secret pile of plastic hanging out in my garage that I don’t know what to do about...

Maybe my kids are an anomaly, but they love their berries. Blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, and especially raspberries, which they like to stick on their fingertips (of course) and suck off slurpily. We do our best to eat seasonally, but, honestly, I have a hard time giving up berries. And cucumbers and green vegetables. We live in New Hampshire. At a certain point, we cut our losses and are thankful for refrigerated shipping containers.

But do you know what berries come in? Those annoying little plastic containers. I’ve tried to cut our waste by only buying the BIG little plastic containers, but basically, strawberries and blueberries are the only things that come packaged larger-than-pint-sized. This makes sense — any more than that in a raspberry container, and we’d have smashed and moldy berries. Nevertheless, this has been the plastic habit we can’t kick.

Even worse, it’s the plastic habit we can’t recycle.

Our town recycling facility accepts five kinds of plastic: pete no. 1 plastic beverage bottles; no. 2 milk jugs; no. 2 mixed household plastic; assorted large household plastics (toys, flowerpots, etc); and no. 5 plastic, which is collected in a “secret” bin beside the trash chute. Don’t try to sneak any no. 1 plastic that’s not a capped bottle: the ladies who keep our waste facilities running have to wade waist-deep through the piles of people’s less-than-clean recycling in order to weed out the recycling that doesn’t belong. And then it gets tossed.

Those little berry containers? They’re no. 1 plastic, but they’re not beverage bottles. So I’ve been collecting ours, hoping to find a way to recycle them. I have a 13 gallon trash bag filled with them. Every so often the bag tips over and spills what feels like a guilty secret onto the cool floor of the garage. It’s overflowing, at this point, and I don’t know what to do with it.

Is there a better way to do this?

Should I petition my town to accept more kinds of recycling at their facility? I am assuming that they don’t because of the cost, but maybe it’s just because people don’t ask for it. [Yesterday, the girl giving me a pedicure disclosed that she had just started recycling, in her mid-20s… It hadn’t occurred to me that maybe people just don’t recycle? Maybe it never occurred to anyone that they needed to recycle those berry containers?]

Should I sneak my berry containers slowly in to my sister-in-law’s recycling bin? — her town does no-sort recycling pick-up. [But what happens at their facility? Are there theoretically recyclable objects that they also have to throw in the trash because they’re not equipped to process them?]

Should I try to figure out a better way to package berries for mass distribution — compostable plastic? Wood baskets for short-distance transport? I can’t possibly be the first person who’s asked this.

Should I just cry, and stop buying berries, and listen to the wails of my children as we trudge past the beautiful displays of bite-sized fruit? My dear children, who have already given up drinkable yogurt, packaged granola bars, more than one box of snack crackers a week, and store-bought bread? My poor children, whose mother asks them, when they ask for milk that comes in plastic containers, “Do you want a duck to get its head stuck in this plastic ring? Are you trying to kill the turtles?” [Thank you, National Geographic Kids, for your well-photographed article on 6 ways our trash is bad for animals who live near or in water… ]

“No, Mommy. I don’t want to hurt the ducks. I can have some jar-milk from the farm instead.”

I don’t want to make them give up their raspberry fingers! What can I do???!

Extremely Customizable Homemade Granola Bars

Kid tested recipe!

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Dry Ingredients

  • 2c rolled oats, ground to your desired thickness (leave as is -> quick oat size -> oat flour, depending on your taste)
  • 1/2-1tsp salt
  • 1/4-1/2c sugar
  • dash cinnamon
  • 2-3 c additions — ie: nuts, chopped or whole; dried fruit (we like diced dried apricots and dried cherries and blueberries); shredded coconut; sesame seeds; chia seeds; mini choc chips; etc…

Wet Ingredients

  • 1/3c peanut, almond, or sunflower seed butter
  • 6tbsp melted butter or oil
  • 1/4c honey (adjust depending on how much sugar you used/taste!)
  • 1/4c warm water

Directions

  1. Assemble and mix together dry ingredients.
  2. Assemble and whisk together wet ingredients.
  3. Mix everything together. If too dry, add water 1tbsp at a time. If too wet, add more oat flour.
  4. Spread and press into a well-greased pan. I use a 13×9 brownie pan for thin, or 9×9 for thick.
  5. Bake 20-40minutes (until brown) at 350F.
  6. (Optional, but a nice touch): Drizzle with melted choc chips!
  7. Cut while warm! Remove from pan. They get less crumbly as they cool

ENJOY!!!

I’m a Not-Fun Boss-Mom

Before he even had a real violin!

It started with a huge family fight, and the huge family fight started with violin practice, which actually had been going well until my 5-year-old started “deep breathing” because he was frustrated — and blew his deep breaths in my face, along with some spit. I went upstairs and punched some pillows and yelled in frustration and wondered, Why isn’t this easier? What am I doing wrong? Why isn’t violin fun? Why does my son have to struggle witheverything?

I have big feelings. My oldest son has big feelings. My younger son, it turns out, also has big feelings – he’s just generally slower to wind up (but also wind down) than the rest of us. I’ve worked really hard to arm us all with coping techniques. I’ve read Raising Your Spirited Child cover to cover – twice, and I pull it out at least once a week for reference. [It changed my life and my way of interacting with and viewing my oldest, but that’s a story for a different post.] We’ve read picture books about feelings; I’ve talked feelings into the ground; we talk about our fights; we read this really great book, My Many-Colored Breath, and learned how to breathe out some of our emotion to calm our nervous system.

But that day – that practice – I couldn’t do it, and neither could he. His “calm breaths” were spit colored, and so was my face. He was mad, and frustrated, and I was the target because I was standing in front of him. I should have calmly put the violin away, and walked away, but I didn’t, and there we were, and then we were screaming, all of us, at each other. And in the midst of all this anger and frustration, my son was yelling, “BUT I WANT TO PRACTICE, MOMMY!!!!”

So that night, I pulled out my teacher-training notes. I pored over them, hoping they’d have some practice-saving technique that I was overlooking. I didn’t want to bother my son’s violin teacher again – I felt like we’ve been the Needy Family in terms of emotional management this year. I made a plan so that “this would never happen again.” The next day, we implemented Mommy’s Super Fun Extra Exciting Practice Is Amazing plan. We made it through the rest of the week. Problem solved?

Not really.

I was exhausted, and you know what? My son still got frustrated. We were working on focus, and on setting his posture up BEFORE he started playing, and all of these things, for my bright, quick, often anxious child, take a tediously long time. I can’t make them take shorter than the amount of time they take. He often makes them take longer, getting distracted by lines on the wall and thoughts in his head.

After his lesson that week – at which I shared NONE of our struggles with his teacher, because I thought they were over and was trying to be self-reliant – I was in the pediatrician’s office and saw this Parents magazine cover that made me just absolutely livid. It was a smiling, airbrushed, vaguely mixed-race mom with her mixed-race kids (my kids are mixed too!) and the headline was, “How to be a (Fun) Mom Boss! The Gentle Way to Raise a Respectful Child.” Oh my gosh, I thought. F*** you. Everything in life does not have to be fun. Sometimes things are a big struggle and I didn’t have time to blow-dry AND put on makeup AND pack lunches AND PRACTICE GENTLE PARENTING. I HATE GENTLE PARENTING ADVICE. WHOSE CHILDREN ARE REASONABLE ENOUGH/WHO IS CALM ENOUGH AND HAS ENOUGH SLEEP THAT THEY NEVER YELL. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I want to be very clear here. I am not advocating yelling as a parenting tool. I am just being practical about this. I am not the only parent who cannot at all times remain calm and address my child like they are a tiny adult. My children are not actually tiny adults. My children sometimes hate wearing shoes and still have to wear them because we live in New Hampshire and it’s not summer all the time. No amount of gentle cajoling, storytelling, distraction, and Fun Mom Bossing are going to get the shoe situation to be palatable for them. Sometimes we are late because someone had to poop at the last minute and PUT THE SHOES ON NOW! I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT IT!

What I mean is this:

Part of the problem with our violin practice is that I thought it always had to be fun. My parents pushed me very hard – and I pushed myself quite hard as well – and I had a pretty fickle relationship with my own mother and practice; my memories of early practice include throwing my violin at her and screaming and clenching my bow hand into a monster claw. [I also remember picking my belly-button in my teacher’s studio.] My big goal was that I wouldn’t have expectations of my son, and I’d just let violin be a fun collaborative thing we did together. You know, every day. Fun, every day. With a preschooler. Totally reasonable, right?

It’s not always fun.

It’s not supposed to be fun all the time.

We need to stop pretending, for our kids, and for ourselves, that everything is supposed to be fun and make them happy. This realization was huge for me that week, and if it’s not a huge realization for you, I’m jealous.

I was working so hard to make everything about violin fun. I felt like a parental failure every time he came up against something difficult and got frustrated. In fact, I was so wrapped up in feeling like a failure that I forgot to notice when he moved through the difficulty and came out the other side successfully. My desperate need for him to be unfailingly happy was making it impossible for me to see that our difficult practices were building his resilience, his ability to face a challenge, and his faith in our relationship and my love for him.

When I let go of needing it to be fun, a huge wave of relief washed over me. With permission to have a frustrating practice, I could empathize with his frustration and we could move through it together, instead of me standing on the outside battling it for him, which didn’t help him [he still felt frustrated] or me [I felt like a failure]. We have had some all-fun practices and some challenging, frustrating practices since then, but I don’t dread telling him it’s time to practice, for the first time in a while. I’m trying with all my might to lean into the hard times.

This past weekend was our big solo recital. “I’m not nervous, Mom,” my son reassured me. “I did this last year, and last year I was only four!” He got up on that big stage, and he owned it. He embodied focus. He took all the time he needed to set up his violin and bowhold. He waited through the introduction. He played wonderfully. And at the end, he made direct eye contact with me and smiled. He knew he’d done a good job. Not because every practice was easy, but because he’d done things that had once been hard for him, well.

So this is my pledge to stop trying to make everything fun. Yes, we’ll play games and be silly in practice. Yes, I’ll say ridiculous things like, “Let’s amputate your arm!!!” when my kids get scrapes, because it makes them laugh and move on from their injury. But I’m also going to let them know that things are hard and things hurt. I’m going to stop trying to make everything easy. It’s okay for it to be hard. It’s okay to be frustrated. That’s how they grow. That’s how they build resilience. That’s how we grow and build resilience as parents.

Some things that used to be hard for Charles — that he now rocks, with the occasional awful day:

Skiing. No kids had fun posing for this photo. But there is no whining allowed on the ski slopes!
Riding a pedal bike / being nice to his brother 😉
Following Lego directions! It takes SO LONG to build a Porsche!

Thursday Up & Down with the Kids

HAPPY KIDS ON SKIS

The close of cycling season still has me bummed, but we’re starting to get outside skiing, and it’s boosting my energy. As 2019 opens, I’m resolving to adventure outside more with the kids – I have a habit of keeping them inside while I do housework or run errands, using cold weather as an excuse not to play. As part of this new resolution, I decided that I was going to attempt a solo trip to Pats Peak with them last week.

Last year, Charles and I had a regular Wednesday morning ski date; he’d go down and have a lesson while I skied, and then we’d get hot chocolate and lunch together. I didn’t trust myself enough to take him out on my own. This year, with his preschool schedule and our other activities, Thursdays are our “free” day. Since conditions were good – temps in the 30s but a good base at the mountain! – it seemed like the perfect day. Daddy was working late; we needed some fresh air and time together to keep our day from falling apart.

Both kids were surprisingly helpful getting geared up. We found them their own little boots at the S&W ski swap this fall, and they’ve proven invaluable (even if the buckles on Theo’s boots are a bit worn and tend to pop loose occasionally). Charles has super narrow feet and is generally skinny and small; his Dalbello narrow boots are perfect for holding him in place. It’s a relief after having to stuff him into three or four layers of socks the past two years to keep rental boots on him!

Once we finally got out, we had fun. SO much fun. Charles showed off his turns [He suddenly turns! After spending all of last season resisting and snowplowing!] around some sweet foam animal guides, and Theo was brave enough to hold my ski pole. We did a couple of runs on the little bunny hill like this, and then we all got extra brave. Theo decided he’d like to shuffle his own way onto the magic carpet, and Charles started going faster – still keeping his skis parallel!

Four beautiful, amazing things happened in the two hours that we skied that little hill together:

  1. Charles figured out how to get himself up. We have been working on this hard – it’s been holding him back in his lessons and in skiing with us. It’s very frustrating for him to try to coordinate his thoughts with his body, and it’s very frustrating for me to watch him flail and whine, so it was a huge success for both of us that we could stay calm enough to talk through getting both skis going the same direction, pointing them at the side of the hill, and then pushing up on the bottom ski to stand. His pride in himself was worth the frustration and patience!
  2. Theo skied solo! This required…
  3. Mommy skiing backwards. This is something that I’ve known I need to do but have been terrified to try, especially when I’m out by myself. But I did it! I did it, and I was able to turn with him, and catch him when he got going fast. However, he did ask me to turn around at one point – “Mommy, you go to slow back. Let me hold your hand. I want to go fast!”
  4. We had SO MUCH FUN OUTSIDE TOGETHER. It was thrilling to cheer each other on, giggle, dance on the magic carpet, and then go in for chocolate milk and hamburgers. I can’t wait for our next Mommy Ski Date.
Let’s do it again, Mommy!

Ski Season Begins!

I think it’s time for me to face that our biking season is over. Ski season has begun! This past week we took our kids up to Stowe for a couple of days of skiing. Our ski season usually starts in January, but all of the mountains around us opened close to Thanksgiving this year! Hooray for snow!

I didn’t learn to ski until I was 26, and then I promptly tore my ACL (on a flat, in powder) and got pregnant, so I really didn’t learn to ski until I was 30 and had had two kids and an ACL repair.  Last winter, I finally got brave enough to take myself out and work on things. I find skiing terrifying. I grew up in the midwest, where things are very, very, very flat, and people are cautious… so plummeting down a hill – nay, a mountain – at top speeds seems awfully foolish. Both of my kids ski (more or less), and my husband loves it, so it’s worth it to me to put in the effort so I’m not left behind sipping burnt coffee in the lodge, watching everyone else have fun. 

Two winters ago, I had an almost 1-year-old and was desperately out of shape. I went up the magic carpet on a bunny hill, got vertigo, couldn’t face my fear of getting hurt again, took off my skis, and walked down. After a very cautious lesson on said bunny hill, I decided to practice by myself. I fell, and without the core strength to pull myself back up to standing, cried, took off my skis, and walked down the damn hill. Again. That’s largely how the season went. I think I might have snowplowed down a couple of greens, a couple of times, but I’ve blocked a lot of the memories. It was a lot of getting over my desperate fear of tearing my ACL a second time. 

Last winter, both kids had skis and boots. It was looking like Charles was going to be coordinated enough to ski, so I decided to kick it into gear. We had started biking a little, but more importantly, I had completed 5 months of Beachbody workouts by the time ski season rolled around. I was leaner, and much stronger. I trusted my legs and my core strength again. So I took a lot of lessons, and I went out by myself to Pat’s Peak – our home mountain – on mornings when I had a sitter for the kids. 

I skiied greens! I learned to get out of my wedge turns and keep my skis parallel! We took some trips up to Cannon mountain and I started to learn how to edge! Importantly, we took our SONS skiing, and I was able to help Charles up when he fell on a Blue trail – a trail I would have been terrified to ski the season before. I took Theo – then a very whiny 2 – skiing, and managed him between my skis and also beside me, holding onto a pole. We rode a chairlift together. I had the strength to help my children. Nothing could make me happier. We could be outside together in the winter — and all have a good time. 

I can’t wait to see what this season will bring! New boots, I hope, and a better understanding of how to use my skis as tools to get me around the mountains!

Learning to Ride a Pedal Bike, Part 1: Frustration & Elation

At the beginning of June, we took a family trip to Kingdom Trails. Before this trip, we’d tossed around the idea of getting a pedal bike for our oldest a few times, but he’s pretty small for his age and was happy on his balance bike, so we weren’t particularly anxious. On this trip, we did some longer rides with the boys, and realized that the kind of trails Charles was ready to ride would be faster and easier with pedals. [Who really wants to tripod up a hill, which is what you do on a balance bike?] So, we came home and, after a few nights of fevered kid-bike research on Two-Wheeled Tots, ordered him a bright orange Cleary Gecko. At that time, he was around 33lbs and had an inseam of 16 inches – but was a pretty aggressive rider, and does most of his riding on our gravel driveway or in the woods  – which really limited us in terms of bikes that weren’t too heavy, would fit his inseam, and would still fit his riding style. These attempts are listed in chronological order but take place over the course of a month! 

Attempt 1: The Bike is Heavy and Pedals are Hard Feeling warm and fuzzy from stories of elated parents who’ve made a painless switch from balance to two-wheeled pedal bike with no need for training wheels – and so freakin’ excited for him – I couldn’t wait even ten minutes after the box arrived to put together the Gecko. We adjusted the seat so that his feet were flat, and he excitedly put his feet on the pedals…… ………and fell over. Then he tried it again, and fell over. So I pushed him through the grass; he put one foot on a pedal, tried to push it, and gave up. He abandoned the bike in the grass and got back on his balance bike.

I pushed him too hard. He’ll never like riding. Why did we do this. What were we thinking. What about all the parents who told me their kids just hopped on their pedal bike and went? What’s wrong with our kid? Apparently, after 5 minutes with the new bike, I was showing about as much patience as he was.

After the kids scurried off to hit each other with sticks, I picked up his pedal bike to put it up against the wall of the garage. Then I picked up the balance bike, and realized that it was half the weight of the pedal bike. Then I remembered that, even as one of the lightest options in kids’ 12-inch-wheel bikes, the Gecko weighs in at 13 lbs, which is almost half my kid’s body weight. How would I feel trying to pedal a 60-lb bike???

I took the pedals off and called him back over. “Charles, this bike is really heavy. Would you like to try it without pedals on to see how it feels? I bet it will go SUPER FAST for you down the hill!”

Attempt 2: Dad & Cleary Customer Support Save the Day After I spent the whole first afternoon telling Charles that he could ride his new bike as a balance bike for a while just to get him on the darn seat, his dad decided to spend some time coaching him the next day, and got him on the bike with pedals. They talked through pedaling, they talked through using toes instead of heels, they talked through being brave and working hard, and then his dad gave him a push and I watched him get his feet up and pedal. For a few pedal strokes. He looked awkward on the bike and we kept adjusting the seat height and arguing about whether he should be toe- or flat-foot-on-the-ground. I finally called Cleary’s super helpful customer service line, was assured that he was NOT supposed to have full leg extension on his bike (this encourages him to stand to pedal — actually very useful, but so far from where we were that I couldn’t even imagine it at the time) and that he WOULD, in fact, someday pedal this bike and rip it on trails.

Attempt 3: Bike Date #1 with Friends Buoyed by the success of pedaling with Dad, and hopeful that he’d let me help him by giving him a boost, I arranged a biking playdate with a friend of his who was just getting comfortable on a balance bike. I didn’t want him to cop out of riding his new bike, so I deliberately “forgot” his old balance bike. Unfortunately, I actually forgot the wrench I needed to get the pedals off, so he tolerated my help and encouragement with pedaling for about 3 minutes and then stole his brother’s balance bike. I ended up pushing Little Bro on the new pedal bike and came home with a sore back. Womp.

Please let me interrupt my own narrative for a hot second here. It’s VERY IMPORTANT to me that I point out two things: one, that Charles had NO ISSUES balancing his new bike, even though it was heavy; two, that we were both ready to give up on the darn thing after THREE attempts at it. Have some faith and patience, Mommy and Charles! 

Attempt 4: I Figure Out how to Explain Bikes Easily frustrated parents of easily frustrated children who are competent at riding a balance bike, take heart. After I watched Charles and his dad work for a good half hour on pushing off and getting his feet on the pedals, I realized we were missing a very important piece of information: how a pedal bike works. Charles was putting his feet on the pedals, but hadn’t quite figured out that this is what moved the wheels. I sat down with him, showed him that when he pushed on a pedal it moved the chain, watched the chain move the back wheel. VOILA. Understanding, and a lot more enthusiasm for riding the bike!

Attempt 5: Bike Date #2 with a Different Friend G has been riding his pedal bike for almost 6 months. He is one of those kids who transitioned immediately and without issue from balance to pedal bike, on his 4th birthday. G is also one of Charles’s best friends. The two of them have one of those dude friendships where they don’t say much but constantly invent new projects together. I wised up after our last playdate and threw a multi-tool and a wrench for his pedals into my purse. [Let me tell you, it makes me feel awesome to carry tools in my little handbag with blue flowers, while wearing makeup, in wedges. I feel like Super-Mom when my hand touches that cool metal and I know that, whatever the world throws at my kids and their bikes, I can fix it for them.] I was able to fix all the kids’ bikes for them, adjust everyone’s seats so that they could ride each other’s bikes… and then they decided that running around and riding scooters was more fun. And Charles still refused to ride his pedal bike with the pedals on. But the kids were happy!

Attempt 6: Family trip to Kingdom Trails on which Daddy refuses to take the pedals off Charles’s bike and Charles is frustrated that he can’t go fast but then he does go fast and then we all eat ice cream. Phew. 

After the KT trip, Charles didn’t ask to ride his bike without pedals anymore, so I’ll end this chapter of our story here and pick up the story of learning how to use his bike in another post!

 

Charles and Theo Plant a Garden

It feels like I’ve been waiting forever, but our kids are finally old enough to actually help me with the vegetable garden! Now that Theo is 2 1/2, he follows directions and doesn’t smash seedlings; Charles, at 4 1/2, helps plant seeds and harvest. Two years ago, I set aside a small corner of my garden for Charles’s play – a spot he could happily dig in without fear that he’d destroy seedlings. Last year, with both boys mobile, we put in a pea tent/fort and tried to landscape around it with kid-friendly plants. This year, things have expanded quite a bit, driven by the boys’ own creativity as well as my desire to have more than a giant dirt pile.

Starting our Seedlings

I generally haven’t started anything indoors; as an impatient person, I find sprouting and tending seedlings tedious, and with young dogs and children in the house, couldn’t stomach both the wait and the impending [imagined] disaster: dirt and baby plants all over the living room floor. This year, I decided it was time to watch things sprout, and the garden tends to put up too many weed seedlings for it to be a truly fun thing to watch for the kids. So we set up a small seed-starter and planted

Our little seedlings!

  • Pony Watermelon
  • Charentais Melon
  • Summer Savory
  • Bush Cucumbers
  • English Cucumbers
  • Sunflowers
  • French Marigolds

Each of these plants has distinctive seed shape and size, and we ran the gamut from 2-inch-deep single-seed planting to surface scattering, so the kids stayed involved and interested in our tiny planting project. I sourced my seeds from John Scheeper’s Kitchen Garden Seeds; I find that their seeds germinate well and the varietals they carry work well in our climate. I’ve had less luck – although I try every year – with our local organic garden seeds.

Preparing our Garden

While we waited for the weather to warm up enough to plant outside, we turned compost, hoed and shaped our rows – including the kids’ bed – and put landscaping fabric in between the rows to help keep weeds down and show the children where it was safe to walk. The boys were eager to help with this project; they love being outside, and they both like to be helpers. I was happy to find them little jobs to do, and happy for their company!

Raking compost into the asparagus bed.

Theo ready to take compost to the garden!

Charles in the compost bins, helping me turn compost.

 

The Boys’ Corner

Theo in last year’s pea tent

Last year we planted sweet peas to cover the tent!

Once it was warm enough to plant, it was time to think about what was going where! I walled off the asparagus bed, which is tucked behind their corner, with some old tomato cages spread out; these formed a natural trellis for peas to climb up, and had the added benefit of keeping the kids from stepping on just-emerging asparagus heads. We planted peas around one side of the pea tent, as well. [The “tent” is made from bent fenceposts covered in trellising netting.] They chose snow peas – a wonderful choice, as the plants are large, hard to destroy, and easy to harvest from inside the tent.

 

Pansies and watermelon climbing the tent!

The boys in their tent this year.

Both boys are partial to watermelon, and because I couldn’t find a better place – or even space! – in the rest of the garden, we planted our pony watermelon seedlings around the other side of the tent. They had a rough start, but we tucked fresh compost in around them every week for the month of June, and once the heat of July kicked in, they started climbing the trellis. Hopefully no little critters or coyotes will eat them this year!

The sunflower seedlings needed to go somewhere desperately, so one afternoon while Theo slept, Charles and I delineated “beds” with old wooden tomato supports and planted the sunflowers in one tidy row. Charles placed a little blue garden fairy at the head of the row, to watch over them as they grew. Sunflowers are an amazing flower to grow with kids – they sprout quickly, grow quickly, and can be any number of imaginary things; we’ve read books where sunflowers are pretend monsters; serve as gifts for dragons; make their own grown-up free fort as they grow in a circle; and the boys come up with their own stories. Planting all of ours in a row has had the intended effect of walling off the boys’ section of the garden so it feels like a special enclave to them. They’re especially thrilled now that the flowers are up over Mommy’s head!

Also in their corner are plants they chose, planted, and tend themselves: two ever-bearing strawberry plants, covered in a good deal of bird netting to keep out birds and chipmunks, and tucked in with straw; and two large purple pansies, selected by Charles for color and me for hardiness [kids can step on pansies, and pull them up, and unlike their name suggests, they persist]. I also planted baby beets in one corner as a surprise, and we’ve let flowers from last year’s wildflower patch reseed themselves – a large maroon cosmos keeps them excited.

It’s exciting to watch them sit in their pea tent and munch peas from the plants around them. They emerge and bring in a cucumber or green beans to share, pretending one is cooking dinner for the other. They’ve dug a huge hole in one corner countless times – there is still a big enough patch of unplanted ground for them to have a satisfying game going with construction trucks and matchbox cars. I’m glad they’re entertained while I’m weeding and harvesting; their little voices keep me company; and they now have a sense of ownership and stewardship. Win. Win win win. I’m so happy to have my boys in the garden!

No plants were harmed by bikes or digging! Everyone and everything is welcome in the garden!

My Kids are Rockstars

Or, an overview of two great rides for early, eager riders.

Or, how to bribe your kids up a bunch of hills with the promise of tasty snacks. 

Or, look, let’s admit it, we are obsessed with Kingdom Trails. 

Before we dive into this post, let me first say that we did not intend to take our children on difficult trails on this trip. Charles is just now comfortable on his pedal bike, and Theo is fully 2 1/2 – alternately brilliant and charming or whiny/screaming/throwing a tantrum, all very articulately and utterly unpredictably. After our ride with our friends, we all took the boys down to the pump track behind The Hub, and it took a fair amount of cajoling to get them to even leave for a ride on Bemis – a trail they’ve ridden before, several times, but still collapsed on in the first 100 feet and announced they were just too exhausted to ride.

Ready to go again after a snack break!

Once we got into the rhythm of riding, we all enjoyed each other as a family again. The boys were cheerful and observant; Charles was brave enough to start pedaling over some roots; we took a pit stop for some kids’ Larabars where Bemis and Loop join and snapped a few pictures of happy kids itching to ride more. Because they were so enthusiastic, we kept going on Loop, intending to come out near Mountain View Farm, where we’d end our ride and send a grown-up to fetch a car and drive us back to Wildflower Inn.

Best Dad Ever coaching our kids up a steep section

But the trails leading to Mountain View were closed (OH NO!), so we took a very pretty detour through a field and up a steep hill, re-entering the woods and finding ourselves at a totally unmarked intersection. A nice man out with his daughter met us having just descended the trail we were considering ascending, and informed everyone present that it was Poundcake. A black diamond. And the shortest route out.We talked in low tones about turning around, although that would have meant a three mile ride back for our tired kids. My husband finally rode ahead to check out the trail, and, given how close we were to the farm, he decided we should try it with the kids.

They freaking killed it.

Emerging victorious in the parking lot of the Inn at Mountain View, my oldest said, “Can we ride some more?” And we took the road back to Wildflower, with only a few boosts to get them up the hills. No need for a rescue ride in the car. They rode into the parking lot by Village Sport Shop Trailside to cheers and “awws” from onlooking groups of adults.

My kids are rockstars. 

Riding up Darling Hill Road

 

The next day, Charles sulked and gave the sitter attitude while my husband and I rode in the morning. He devoured a hot dog with great gusto at lunch, and announced he was ready to hit the trails. We had scoped out a route on our ride – now that we knew they could climb Poundcake, we were tired of riding Bemis with them. So we took them on a route at the south end of the trails.

Impatient to try Culvert Cut!

Rooty descent? No prob!

Once again, they killed it. We’d been looking forward to riding all of Culvert Cut with them, but the skies opened up and we decided we’d better turn around. By the time we got back to the road, it was sunny again. We stopped for a snack, let them run around [how do they have energy for riding and running?], and set off down Border. A trail that starts in a field, enters the woods, and has a rooty, knobby descent: no problem for these guys. Snack in a clearing bordered by wild raspberries, accompanied by the songs of a wood thrush and song sparrow: magical.

 

 

Stopping for raspberries on our way up Old Webs

Climbing out on Old Webs, the grumpiness set in. Charles flopped over on his bike several times, declaring it “too hard.” Theo plodded along rather cheerfully, musing, “Mommy, do birds have teef? Can dey eat raspberries?” and only whining when his brother stopped. We crawled up the trail at snail’s pace; I grew irritated; my husband, luckily, had the genius to let them pick raspberries as we went up. The frequent stops for fruit, as annoying as I found them, got us up the trail. To the chorus of, “I don’t want to go up any more hills, where’s my downhill?” – a feeling I totally get – we emerged onto Up and Downing. Charles and my husband flew back to the car, happy to finally ride fast. Theo and I brought up the rear, pretending our bikes were rally cars and “vroooooom”-ing our way back well behind the two of them. All-in-all, a successful ride.

Those two are rock stars. Despite their complaining, they get an A+ for effort and riding. They both took on roots bigger than their bike tires, zoomed along narrow trails, and hopped easily over rocks. Their infectious enthusiasm for trail riding even when it’s hard reminds me that it’s okay to push our kids a little, as long as the family is together and we can keep it fun!

Happy Bike Family at the end of the day!

Livin’ the Dream

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