goin up cripple creek, goin in a whirl, goin up cripple creek to see…

February 25, 2010 — welfareloser

…some science.

okay. so, if you don’t count the occasional 4-hour road trip to our hometown to see our parents, PRM and i have never taken all the kids with us on an honest-to-god family vacation. so, we may be in a golden window here… our youngest is now old enough to get something out of a family vacation, and our oldest is still young enough to not be horrified at the prospect of taking a vacation with his embarrassing parents (though he might have that nailed down after actually doing it once. i’m just sayin. he’s not stupid.)

one of our favorite vacation spots for the last several years has been Colorado. it has everything PRM and i love. it’s got fishing, it’s got hiking, denver is only an 11-hour drive from iowa city, it’s got snowboarding, it’s got the national fencing headquarters (okay, so that one’s more for me than PRM,) and perhaps most importantly, it’s now home to several of our friends who are willing to let us crash in their homes.

now, taking the kids along does change the itinerary a bit. first and foremost, we will be staying in hotels rather than attempting to inflict our children on anyone we know. also, there isn’t going to be any snowboarding, partly because we’re not going until july, partly because of the expense of equipment rentals for 6 and lessons for 4, and partly because at least 3 of the kids are huge pussies (and the one who isn’t has no goddamned business on a snowboard while he’s still in diapers.) PRM and i went snowboarding this past weekend, and took care of of our need to throw ourselves down mountains without dragging along any of the “OH MY GOD THERE’S SNOW IN MY EYE!” brothers. there will be “fishing,” if you can loosen the definition of the word to include episodes of casting into water that contains fish, with no real hope of actually catching any due to the noise and splashing. there will be “hiking,” so long as that can be considered to describe an episode of driving the van to a parking lot that directly abuts a wildlife area that can be satisfyingly explored in under 1 mile of actual walking.

also, there will be some additions to the itinerary, specially tailored to meet the vacation needs of our geeky offspring:

The Lincoln Children’s Museum
they have a lunar lander, and human-scale prairie dog tunnels. also, it’s a good place to stop to divide the driving into two days. so on the way back, we can hit:

The Lincoln Children’s Zoo
pony rides. butterflies. lots of monkeys. game, set, match.

the Body Worlds exhibit
score! PRM and i both REALLY wanted to see this exhibit, but haven’t managed to make it to any of the cities where it’s been set up yet. it happens to be scheduled to be at the denver museum of natural history until july, so we’re there! luckily, the kids are totally stoked about it too… because we’d be dragging them even if they weren’t.

then, we’ll head south to the:

Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument
we have a pretty neat devonian fossil gorge here, and the kids love it. so i figure if they’re impressed by a bunch of coral and fragments of primitive plants and the occasional brachiopod here in iowa, they are going to be blown away by the 1700 species of plants and animals at this site… which is on the way to what, as far as the boys are concerned, is our main reason for going to colorado at all:

The Cripple Creek Gold Mines
(see? the title of this post isn’t just some random bluegrass lyrics… i was going somewhere with that, bitches!)

two different gold mines. gold, silver, and some iron pyrite. my periodic-table-obsessed offspring couldn’t get to sleep the first night after i told them about this place. ride a train. take an elevator 1000 feet down. wear a hardhat while riding on a rickety mine train on the tour of the mine. pan for gold. did i mention they were excited? SpazMonkey had a solo sick day a couple days after this vacation was announced, and after the thermometer confirmed he wouldn’t be going to school that morning, he jumped up and yelled, “GOOD! BECAUSE I NEED TO START PACKING FOR COLORADO!” he then proceeded to make a 2-page list, only some of which was readily available in the house for him to pack (we still need to buy him a pickaxe and dynamite, apparently.)

things this vacation will not include:

1) CAMPING: it almost sounds like fun… until you think about it. and if we actually woke up with all 4 children still present and accounted for in the tent in the morning, i would eat a wet dog turd.

2) THE TELLURIDE BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL: damn, that’s a tough one to pass up. a few hours west, and it takes place about the time we’re planning on being there. my hero, chris thile and EG’s hero, edgar meyer will be there. you know who else will be there? stinky hippies. piles of them. so you know who won’t be getting within smelling distance of that hot mess? my kids. they might learn a little about music there, but there’s a whole lot of other shit they’d learn, too. i’d sooner take EG to see his other hero, flea, at a red hot chili peppers concert. seriously. i’ve thought about this.

yep. throw in a day of fishing, a day of hiking, some nights of hanging out with friends here and there, some long hours of gameboys and blue’s clues dvds in the car, and a couple dozen stops at mcdonalds and burger king, and probably at least a couple episodes of spectacular puking, and that’s our big-ass summer vacation!

so. you could reasonably expect this blog to not get updated at all in july, as it may take me a month or so to recover from all the awesomeness.

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slap-o-matic

February 20, 2010 — welfareloser

so the east side beginning orchestra, comprised of 90ish 4th-graders from the half-dozen elementary schools on this side of town, had their first concert at the end of january. we had known that EvilGremlin was enjoying playing the bass, and we thought he was good. turns out, he’s REALLY good. we found out that he’s plowed through about 2-3 times as many pages in his lesson book as any of the other kids. during the concert, he was one of the few kids who was drawing long, steady bow strokes with confidence; while the other 8 or so bass players wavered off key and off beat, you could clearly hear EG playing in tune and on time (even as he struggled to see the conductor over the apparently non-adjustable music stand.)

in addition to a little skill, he’s also got some balls. after the beginning orchestra played, they took seats in the audience and listened to the advanced (5th and 6th grade) orchestra play. i knew he liked it – i didn’t know how much. without mentioning the bug up his ass to either of his parents, at his next lesson, he told his teacher that he really liked the music the advanced orchestra had played, and asked if he could play with them. she made sure it was okay with us first, and then said yes.

so! the first advanced orchestra practice was a little intimidating… for me, mostly. EG is tiny and goofy, and dropping him off at the high school in a roomful of 11-13 year olds seemed like one of those things that could go really wrong really quickly… but it was fine. 4 practices in, i’m convinced this is this nicest group of middle-schoolers on the planet. they pay attention to the teacher, they’re polite, outgoing, take the work seriously, but have good senses of humor. several of them went out of their way to make sure EG had all the sheet music he needed, they joke around with him like he’s one of them, and after the initial shock of jumping straight from “plucking out Mary Had a Little Lamb in unison” to “bowing one of eight separate parts of Pachelbel’s Canon in D” and “getting a crash course in playing slap-bass at 142 beats per minute,” he’s having a really, really good time.

i had warned him that one of the more difficult new skills he would need would be keeping time perfectly when other people are playing something completely different from what he’s playing. so i grabbed the violin parts for some of the orchestra music so i could practice with him at home and help get him up to speed more quickly.

yeah. let me just say that i can probably get him through the summer with my help, but by next summer, he’s going to be outplaying me in a big way. we did good on “Crystal City March.” within a few days, he was able to count his measures of rests and come in on his pick-up notes with no problems. i quickly determined that there was no way in hell i’d be playing the violin part to Canon in D anytime soon, so i set up an mp3 player on his old-ass windows 98 computer and got him a recording to play along with.

then there’s the traditional american folk music. like “Cripple Creek.” i LOVE cripple creek. it’s fun. it’s easy. i have it memorized, on both the banjo and the fiddle. EG loves cripple creek, too. so he’s practiced it a lot. and as of right now, i physically can’t keep up with the boy on Cripple Creek. now, granted, between my nerve-damaged hands and the necessity of learning how to provide, and then providing, language therapy to MonkeyBeef, i basically took nearly two years off playing the banjo and fiddle, but fuck me! you know that sinking feeling that you’re a douchebag when a 10-year-old hands you your buckwheats at Halo 3? multiply that by about 3, and that’s where i am. actually, on those occasions when i’ve told him to correct his bowing technique to improve his tone, and then taken a turn on his bass to show him what i mean, only to realize that the tone i get out of a bass bow is nowhere near as good as his… make that multiplier more like a 10.

mostly, though, we’re really, really proud of the little shit. it’s okay when your kids don’t like the same things you like (okay, so i almost cried when the twits had me take down all their star wars posters so there’d be more room for science posters, but other than THAT, it’s okay.) and it’s okay when your kids aren’t good at stuff. but when your kid loves something that you love, AND is good at it, it’s REALLY freaking cool.

so, yay! i’m working on getting my bluegrass back up to speed. PositiveRoleModel and i can both keep up with him on “Boil Them Cabbages Down” and “Ashokan Farewell” and “Red-Haired Boy.” and MonkeyBeef loves to come busting in on practice sessions, grab the bow, and sway back and forth as he belts out the ABC song while playing the bass that his big brother will helpfully hold for him. and the twits… are busy composing music. they’re mostly frustrated by their parents’ inability to play what they have written – even when they write it in tablature for a certain retarded banjo player. even though said retarded banjo player insists that there should be the same number of lines in every measure, and that the numbers on the lines probably should have 2 digits only on very rare occasions, and never 3 digits… banjo players are still retarded. just ask DramaQueen and SpazMonkey!

anyway. family music. good times!

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yeah, it’s cool… but it probably won’t get you laid

February 18, 2010 — welfareloser

so i’ve mentioned that the kids are really, really into science, right? right. one of their favorite games to play right now is to quiz each other on the periodic table. turns out, they can all name every element, its atomic number, whether or not it’s radioactive, which series and period it’s in, its electron shell configuration, its most common valence states, and, in the case of metals and whatnot, its crystal structure (and if you can’t visualize “trigonal bipyramidal,” they’d be happy to draw a picture for you. no shit.)

and that’s just the base knowledge that all 3 of the older boys have down cold. any one of them may also be able to tell you a melting point, a color or hardness, or the latin root (score one for me… those little shits are getting some stealth linguistics whether they like it or not!) and any number of other oddball properties.

even MonkeyBeef gets in on the act. it’s pretty damned funny when mr. special ed drags a kitchen chair over to the periodic table poster in the kitchen and starts jabbing his finger at random squares on it, saying, “WHA DIS? WHASS NUMMER ONE? ISS HI-JO-JEN!” he also loves the new 8-bajillion-piece molymod molecular model kit… he knows the red is oxygen, the white is hydrogen, the yellow is sulfur, and the black is carbon. “a white one hi-jo-jen, tiny bond, a wed one OCK-DOH-JEN, tiny bond, a white one HI-JO-JEN… WADDER! YAY! SIX BWACK ONES – BESSZENE WING! YAY, BESSZENE WING!” he’ll build a random molecule and ask his brothers to tell him the name of it.

it probably goes without saying that they are not impressed with the large holes in my knowledge of chemistry. i enjoyed chemistry. i was good at it. i took honors chemistry. i may have even gotten A’s. but it’s now been 15 years since i was a freshman in college, and i’ll be damned if i can remember much about sp3 hybrid orbitals. EvilGremlin is learning how to to use that thing called the “index” at the back of the chemistry textbooks i’ve gotten for him.

so. here’s my big-ass list of product recommendations.

MolyMod makes the best molecular model kits available – you can do space-filling or ball-and-stick models, its sturdy, the models don’t fall apart when handled (or when used to thwack a brother on the head.)

www.webelements.com is the place to surf. also, the place to buy really awesome posters. and periodic table socks.


“World of Chemistry” basically, anything written by stephen zumdahl is good, but i like this one because it’s for low-level high school chemistry. being written for unmotivated 16-year-olds makes it perfect for a highly motivated 10-year-old.

i just picked up a cheap used copy of “An Introduction to Molecular Orbitals” for EG – there are a ton of orbital theory books out there, most probably over his head; the big selling points for this one were that it was recommended for beginning-to-intermediate chemistry students, and that the reviews all raved about the quality of the illustrations.

“The Elements: A Visual Exploration” has been a great book for the twits, who are less interested in theory and more interested in what the heck technetium and beryllium actually LOOK like.

“The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry” – basically aimed at high-schoolers, and very well-written. EG has devoured this book, and even at age 6, the twits can follow it pretty well.

“It’s Elementary” – for younger kids. the twits love it, and even EG thought it was pretty good. lots of cool pictures and real-world examples of where you might find each element.

Basher’s “Periodic Table” – ahhhh, the book that started it all. we now own 4 copies, no fighting. 4 really dog-eared copies.

Basher’s “Chemistry” – they are counting down the days until this book is released. i should probably change my pre-order from 1 to 4 copies. i should probably also not mention that we will be out of town when it ships, or they’ll want to rearrange our entire summer vacation road trip to colorado.

but really, i owe the biggest debt of thanks to the Mad Science after-school program. all 3 of the older boys have now completed both the astronomy class and the chemistry class. if your child’s school ever offers it, DO IT. for $64 per child, they got a 2-hour session once a week for four weeks, taught by someone with a PhD in the relevant science. each session had at least one “make and take,” like a little toy rocket or “atomic coins,” which were pure genius in their simplicity… punch-out circles of the appropriate sizes for hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sodium, calcium, and sulfur, each with appropriately-spaced little slits cut around the edges to represent bonds it could form. you slide the single slot of each of two hydrogens into the two slots of an oxygen, and you’ve got a nice, bent H2O molecule.

the boys played with theirs til they shredded and died, so we made more. a little adobe illustrator (okay… a LOT of figuring out, and then teaching the kids, how to use adobe illustrator,) a little info on valence states and atomic radii from webelements.com, and voila! several snow days were filled with drawing these and printing them on cardstock. there’s nothing else like it on the web (believe me… i looked hard before resorting to teaching myself how to use freaking adobe illustrator!) the project is only about 90% complete, but i thought i’d post them here in case any other parents of nerdy children need their very own set of printable atomic coins for making molecular models on snow days. you get both the .pdf version for printing out, and the .ai version for making your own changes to the original file if you like.

THE PDFs:
atomic coins 1 atomic coins 2 atomic coins 3 atomic coins 4 atomic coins 5
atomic coins 6 atomic coins 7 atomic coins 2 atomic coins 9 atomic coins 10

THE AIs: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

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Economics Lesson of the Day: You No Can Has

February 15, 2010 — welfareloser

EvilGremlin asked for an electron microscope. i told him that the last one i had used had cost about $100,000. He waited for the punchline. i told him that we could not afford an electron microscope. he disappeared, and after a bit of googling, he showed me a refurbished electron microscope he had found for “only” $10,000. i explained that was what his dad’s car had cost, and he lit up and suggested we sell dad’s car. ah, optimism.

ever since opening a savings account for him with his summer earnings, and explaining to him the magic that is compound interest, i think he’s been as exuberant about the possibilities of wealth as a bunch of bankers circa 2007. so today, i added to his economic repertoire the concept of “depreciation.” apparently, i killed some of his innocence and youthful optimism with that one, because he looked like i had just told him that santa claus stabbed the easter bunny after burning down disneyland.

i don’t think he’s done plotting to get an electron microscope, though. he was looking through the job ads in the newspaper later that afternoon.

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Chemistry Lesson of the Day: the awesomeness that is setting hair on fire

February 10, 2010 — welfareloser

what?

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Special Ed gets on the short bus!

February 2, 2010 — welfareloser

yesterday was MonkeyBeef’s third birthday. he got a blue’s clues cake, a blue’s clues toy mailbox with some home-made laminated blue’s clues letters, some fat blue’s clues crayons… and a blue’s clues backpack.

because today, the boy is officially old enough for special ed preschool, courtesy of the taxpayers of the great state of iowa. he’s made decent progress in his weekly language therapy with a speech pathologist at the university hospital – about 5-6 months worth of progress in the last 4 months. not awesome, but good enough, i think… we’ve spent the 9 months since he got his tubes placed wondering if the deafness was all that was wrong with him or not. some days, it seemed like there was something else going on; other days, there were sudden explosions of progress. over christmas, for example, he was suddenly speaking in near-sentences, like “turn key open door please!” (referring to the sun porch where some of his favorite toys are stored) and “don’t throw baby!” (referring to his baby cousin, whom it seems he’d really like to throw, at least when he’s occupying my lap.)

at this point, we’ve pretty much decided that his language skills – which now stand at the skills expected for a child of one year and nine months of age – are the result of 1) catching up after not being able to hear from about 9 months of age to about 27 months of age, 2) missing a critical window of learning how important it is to use language to get shit done; he instead developed other, nonverbal strategies that he now has to unlearn and replace, and 3) the fact that he’s an incredibly stubborn butthead who doesn’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about your goddamned expectations, thank you very much.

so. today was his first day of school! he got into an absolutely awesome special-ed classroom that has 2 teachers that specialize in speech and language difficulties, a max of 7 students (currently just 4 students,) it meets 5 days a week from 8:30 to 11:45, AND is the only special ed classroom in a really nice community daycare center, so for two hours of his 3-hour school-day, each of the 3-year-old special-ed kids gets paired up with a normal 4-year-old “buddy” to talk and play with. awesome, right?

the unfortunate part of all this is that his three older brothers also start school at 8:30. my choices are a) drive MB to school while his brothers walk to school alone, or b) continue to walk his brothers to school, and have MB ride the special-ed bus. if my 4th-grader just had one 1st-grader to walk to school, i’d let them do it. but two? uphill, two blocks, in the snow? some days, i could just about throttle them for screwing around and dragging their feet. and i’ve watched other big/little sibling pairs walking to and from school… and it’s not always pretty. the little girl who dragged her feet – so her big brother dragged her by the scarf… the 5th grade boy who, charged with walking his 1st-grade brother and 3rd-grade sister home, managed to piss them both off so badly that his sister ran back inside the building, wriggling out of her backpack and slamming the door in his face as he failed to tackle her; and as he ran in after her, the youngest brother watched for a moment, then shrugged and walked home by himself after they failed to return after five minutes… the 4th grader who forget his brother in kindergarten and had to turn around and go back for him 20 minutes later…

it’s not that any of them are bad kids… every one of those kids is actually a really GREAT kid: nice, smart, good. but. they’re just kids. and when you put kids in charge of even smaller kids, hilarity ensues! so, yeah. i’m not even going to try that one out, because i have a pretty good idea of where that’s headed. a 55-pound EvilGremlin in charge of 90 pounds worth of brothers is not a fair contest. so, the short bus it is!

of course, i can only do so much to explain all of this to a kid who can barely talk. so he knew i was talking about school, and he knew i was talking about a bus, and he knew his new backpack was awesome. so here’s the little man with hot fudge sundae pop tart still crusted around his mouth, and no idea of what’s about to happen:

and here he is wondering why the hell EvilGremlin is trying to put his backpack on his back (where he can’t even SEE it! i mean, come ON!):

and here comes the short bus:

he was cool with walking outside. he was cool with the bus. then he realized i was putting him on the bus and not coming with him, and he was definitely NOT FUCKING COOL.

so. he cried the entire bus ride. but, having cried himself out, he apparently was almost all smiles for the first two hours of school. he laughed. he painted. he played with his new friends. he scooped rice in cups at the “rice table” and thought that was the shit. he was tired by 11 AM, and occasionally started to tear up and suck his thumb… and when he came around the front of the building at 11:45 and saw me, he was laughing and crying at the same time and just about lost his shit, because hey… that was the first that he knew that i wasn’t getting rid of his ass permanently!

so! so far so good! he’s in school. he may not be that impressed with the fact that he’s expected to do it again tomorrow, but it’s looking like he’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. also? we’re now going on 3 hours of nap and counting. whee!

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