Family biz

the tightrope between letting go and holding on

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Lately I have begun to think about growing up. not myself mind you, that is a long way off, but my kids.

As a parent I want to savor every bit of cute childhood-ness that I see every day. But at the same time I’m supposed to be prepping the kids to grow up. Part of that is the urge to protect my kids from potential threats ,either physical or social. A dilemma that i have, is that I want to encourage their individuality. Each one is of them is this glorious, funny, smart person that could be anything. That is balanced with my worries about how the group can isolate away the unique. An example of this one of McKelvey’s christmas presents. She asked for a cloak, full length cloak. She asked for one because she doesn’t like big winter coats and loves olden times. Also as a lover of American Girl stories namely Felicity, she wanted a red cloak. Wanting to protect her from all the Little red riding hood jokes that would come her way we convinced her to approve a different color. I’ll find a pic of the cloak for you to see.

But she still gets a lot of comments, all positive, about the cloak. People look and stare, which is not something a kids usually wants, definitely my kids. So she has this great unique point of view and interests, but doesn’t want to stick out. How do you foster that and protect is at the same time?

So there is this tightrope between letting go and holding on, is that being a parent?

How many people out there want to be themselves but don’t want people to make a big deal about it?

Family biz

holidays and more

well we are back from our extreme holiday excursion. Extreme because it involved driving back and forth across the country in a minivan with 3 kids and 2 dogs. And overall the kids did great. not a lot of complaining pretty good cooperating and average amount of arguing with each other. Thank goodness for laptop computers and DVDs. To their credit they didn’t ask to watch a movie right away, and just looked out the window for the first hour or so. But that might be because we left at 5:30am and they were dazed.

We had a great visit with some friends in Cincinnati before getting to my parents house. We missed the snow storm. and had a great time with Jon & Tom at the American Girl Store.

All in all we had a great trip. Arden got an ear infection, but was OK and we got to see a lot of friends and family. Pix forthcoming.

In other news… McKelvey entered the PTA art contest called Reflections. Her dance won 1st place at the school, and we learned today in the district. Now I don’t know how big the district is, but it’s pretty great.

Bit of the ordinary, Family biz

Books and sleeping

McKelvey has been recently been reading the Harry Potter books. She has gotten thru the first two. As a result, she has developed a fear of basilisks she never had before. Which means for the first time in a long while she wants me to sit with her as she falls asleep. Usually, she can fall asleep by herself. But lately she can’t.

Also Arden has this phlemy cough that she can’t get rid of and wakes her up at night. So I can’t seem to get anything done at night. Between the long time put them to bed and Arden waking up repeatedly, there is no time to do the requisite late night email.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Bit of the ordinary, Family biz

Turkey time(and game time)

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This year’s thanksgiving was great. Not only did Ann prepare a fabulous meal, but the kids were also great. We had the usual minor fights over cleaning up after themselves(I totally understand why my parents kept wanting me to not leave my shoes in the middle of the living room), but on the whole it was awesome. We taught the girls a few new games, Uno and a Harry Potter board game. Both McKelvey and Arden loved UNO, although Arden was on a team. McKelvey liked playing and holding the cards. Arden seemed to enjoy the silly banter the most. It was really great to play a game with the girls and not have them telling me what the barbie I’m holding is supposed to say. Not that I don’t like their make beleive games, it’s just that they don’t like you to break away from the script in their heads.

The Harry Potter game is basically like Clue but with a HP flair. McKelvey had a great handle of how to figure out the clues and ask the questions. She wasn’t to good on strategy yet. But hey she is seven.

I didn’t realize how much I missed playing cards or board games until we pulled them out. I just hope the interest from the girls will stay around. Or they just let have the doll say what I want it to.

Bit of the ordinary

Green wackiness

In the same vein as my previous post, this one is also environmental:Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway) makes his private island green.

The wacky part:

his North Dumpling Island as an independent nation and himself as Lord Dumpling. Kamen claims to have his own currency and offers visas to visitors to the tiny island a few miles from Mystic, where he is the only resident.

The cool part:

Visitors arrived on a wind-swept day, with Kamen’s wind turbine spinning a generator and solar panels facing the sky….Kamen has been installing LED lights all over the island.

“We have zero tolerance for filaments,” he said of incandescent bulbs.

Philips Color Kenetics, a Massachusetts-based company doing the project to draw attention to LEDs, says the lights cut Kamen’s electrical use at least in half.

Kamen showed his visitors his basement water purification system, which he already has put to work in Honduras. The system can turn water from any source into clean drinking water free of disease, he said.

Bit of the ordinary

Green Churchiness

While I don’t agree with them all the time, the vatican is taking a step in the right direction. they are going green.

the activation of a new solar energy system to power several key buildings and a commitment to use renewable energy for 20 percent of its needs by 2020.

This is a step in the right direction, one that every EU country has to do by 2020.

Bit of the ordinary, Education & Miseducation

The balancing act

Well my show is open, with strike happening tonight. This weekend was pretty uneventful. The kids played with friends on Saturday, with today being a stay at home day. Although Arden was sick today so that threw some things for a loop. That seems to be one of the hardest times to be a parent. When your kid is sick and cranky(really cranky) and even though you tell yourself to cut them some slack, you get extremely frustrated with them. But beyond that things are ok.

I find myself doing a lot of department head things lately. Reports, budgets, student requests, faculty requests etc. I’m glad to do most of it, since it needs to get done and is quite necessary for the department to run. But I’m finding less time for the fun stuff : teaching, designing, being in the shop. Hopefully soon I can get a decent balance between the two opposing forces. Well, until that balance comes, I guess I will consol myself with the fact that my new office has two big windows filled with natural light.

Family biz

Dancing with my stars

Had fun this morning playing around with the girls. We went to the rehearsal hall at work to play around. I put on some music and we danced around and goofed around a bit as well. I must remember to do this while they are still kids and interested. Once they become surly teenagers, my moment will have passed I’m afraid.

the Blog of Owen Collins