First, catch a wild mommy!

According to Leo, that's the first step in building a custom Lego set.

This is a rock-climbing cabin set I designed, based on the Creator "Mountain Hut" set.

On first glance, it might not be obvious how this is different from the three versions in the official instructions. Basically, I took some components straight from the set instructions, but I combined them in a new way and added a bunch of my own original elements and components.

It doesn't seem like much, but it's trickier to do that than you might think.

The kids also requested some custom play-sets for some of their favorite characters. Nico requested a zombie fortress that could be used for fighting the plants (as in plants-vs-zombies):

Complete with a tower and turret for the Yeti-Zombie and a winged flying-ship with a landing-pad in the fortress.

Leo wanted a fortress for his "Rabids" a.k.a. "Lapins Crétins" :

I actually made and photographed all of these sets in March, but I postponed posting the photos because I was planning to make an stop-motion animated YouTube short of my mountain cabin. But with the number of projects on my plate, it looks like that's never going to happen, so I figured I might as well post these photos.

Enjoy!

Gender Education Update

My sons Nico and Leo (now aged 12 and 10) recently had a conversation that illustrates what they've learned about gender.

As background, keep in mind that the kids have never played the game "Portal Gun" but they have watched videos on YouTube of people playing the game all the way to the end, plus YouTube has taught them lots of songs about the characters and stories from "Portal Gun."  (This is one of the bizarre aspects of our Internet age that I never would have predicted...)

Anyway, unlike most first-person shooter games, the first-person character playing the game is female ("Shel") as is the main villain ("Glados" -- the computer that runs the Aperture Science Center).

Nico:  I guess Portal Gun shows that girls can do anything boys can do.

Leo:  Yeah, but boys will never believe it because boys are too selfish!  Ha, ha boys are too selfish to believe it!  [pauses to think]  Of course, girls are selfish, too.  Everybody's selfish.

I just chuckled and didn't make any remark.  But, naturally, a lot of things jumped out at me from this tiny exchange.

First, it's clear that they've picked up certain gender-privileged assumptions.  The fact that a male protagonist can set off on a video game adventure goes without saying.  A female protagonist on a video game adventure is strange and noteworthy -- something to glean a lesson from.  And you can see that my kids are using their brains, making an effort to find and learn those lessons that are out there to be learned.

Second, I want to make it clear that I never told them "boys are selfish" or taught them any other such lesson.  Leo has concluded that it is very bad to be selfish, and will often remark on whether various behaviors are selfish.  To be honest, I'm not entirely sure where he picked up his rejection of selfishness -- I'm ashamed to admit that I've been pretty lax about formally teaching my kids ethics -- but I'm not complaining.

Third -- and I'm probably reading too much into this, but -- I think Leo shows some pretty good empathy there for a 10-year-old kid.  Neither boys nor girls are inherently better nor fundamentally different from one another.  But this same human nature, given different circumstances and experiences, can manifest differently.

Also note, I'm currently reading them the "Little House" series as their bedtime story (I've also read them Heidi and the entire Harry Potter series, among other things), and Leo loved the "Dora the Explorer" stories.  So, while having a female protagonists in a video game is noteworthy, reading stories with female protagonists isn't.

I think this shows some kind of progress.  I remember when I was a kid that there was some common wisdom that for a story to appeal to both boys and girls, the protagonist has to be male.  OK, actually I think people still believe that.  (When I told my German teacher that I was reading my boys "Heidi" she protested that the story is for girls...)  But experience shows it's not true.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've read them "Alice in Wonderland" yet...

Done Vacationing in Lower Balconia!!

This past Summer we didn't travel much (one trip to Paris and another one to Paris and London) -- but we don't need to go far now that my son Nico has declared that our apartment is its own country!!  It even sports two charming resort regions: "Upper Balconia" and "Lower Balconia."

Here's a picture of the glorious accommodations we enjoyed during a recent vacation in Lower Balconia:

And here's a view of the gardens of Upper Balconia (note: you can see some cows living in a neighboring country):

Another thing we have in our country is a museum!!  Because what's a country without a national museum?

You can see the kids made an exhibit on Easter Island, plus one of dinosaurs and ancient sea animals, plus trilobites and other fossils in the drawers.  All of the drawers contain exhibits, in fact.

Nico has also written a history of our country, and Léo is the president.  Frankly, it's a great country to live in!!

Children's memories of childhood

The other day Nico and Leo were talking about what they remember about living in Bordeaux. They were both born in Bordeaux, and lived there until they were 6 and 4 (respectively). Now they're 11 and 9 -- and soon we'll hit the five-year anniversary of our move to Switzerland.

Leo said he only remembered three things from Bordeaux: (1) The chocolate croissants (this is one of the most fantastic things about living in France -- every Saturday and Sunday morning we would walk a couple of blocks to the local bakery and get a big bag of fresh-baked croissants and a loaf of bread), (2) The dog-poop that we always had to watch out for on our way to the bakery (this was pretty memorable for me, too, see merde, alors !), and (3) That we had a toy house inside our house. In the kids' room we had one of those plastic toy houses that's big enough for little kids to play inside, but gave it to friends when we moved to Switzerland. I don't have a picture of it, but here are some pictures of our old house.

Nico remembered a little more. He said he vaguely remembered his school (though he couldn't remember any of his teachers or friends), and he remembered the local crêperie where we used to go to have crêpes for dinner. (Then he remarked that he can't wait until we go to Paris again so we can have crêpes with whipped cream.)

It's very cute when they ask about what happened when they were little. When Nico was barely old enough to walk and talk, he loved cars. We would walk all around Bordeaux looking at all the different cars, and Nico could identify a number of different makes and models. Now, not so much, but the one constant has been that he loves anything that has a long list of different variations that he can draw elaborate charts of.

Leo asked me a few months ago what he was like as a baby, and I told him (truthfully) that he was a hugging maniac. He was the sweetest, calmest baby in the world as long as I was holding and cuddling him, but he absolutely would not tolerate being put down by himself even for a second. Fortunately, when he was a tiny baby, I had the opportunity to work from home (writing my first Java book), and Leo was resting on me essentially the whole time I was working on it. And he has remained incredibly affectionate to this day. He's the huggingest little 9-year-old boy you can imagine.

I feel like I should go through all of our old family photos and make an album of them. One weird problem of the digital photo age is that all our photos are in some hard-drive somewhere, and the kids almost never see them. They'd probably remember their earlier adventures better if they were reinforced with photos.

Gotcha!!

If you click on my parenting category, you'll see that we've had various adventures explaining religion to our kids. (In a nutshell, it's not a topic that we have reason to talk about often, but we don't want it to be a grand mystery to our kids.)

The other day, I was on a walk with Leo, and he turned to me with a question:

"Mom, why is Julius Caesar so important that they started the calendar on his birthday?"

My first reaction was: "Wha....? What are you talking about?"

Then it hit me. We've been reading a lot of Asterix comics lately, and they famously all start with the same page, explaining that the year is 50 B.C. -- which in French is "the year 50 before J.C.." Julius Caesar is an important character in the series (the leader of the known world the story is set in), and he's sometimes called by his initials "J.C."

So, I started racking my brain, trying to think of how to explain the whole Christian calendar thing. "Well, you see, Leo, the 'J.C.' of the calendar isn't actually Julius Caesar..." I began.

"Haha, I know! It's Jesus Christ!! Hahahahahahaha!"

Kids............!

My own little piece of crazy

It all started when I thought the Mormon obsession with sex couldn't get any creepier. We saw Meridian Magazine advising prospective FiLs to grill their prospective SiLs about porn consumption. Not as a joke. And don't forget the Children's Friend teaching girls they need to cover their shoulders to be "modest." At the age of four. That was closely followed by this kids-n-sex gem in which naked Barbies are "a poison worse than the black plague of death itself" for boys in second grade.

As a mom of two little boys, I have to admit I find it a little disturbing to start the sex-shaming so young (or at all, really). But the other disturbing part was how the article hit on my own little piece of crazy, with this throwaway line that that mom tossed in for comic relief:

and there are LEGO pieces we've resigned we'll never find

Blasphemy!!! What kind of mom would say something like that?! lol


a portion of our Lego collection

Everybody knows that a good mom is supposed to regularly gather up every single Lego piece in the whole apartment and obsessive-compulsively sort them into seventy categories, each in its own separate bin.

I'm kidding. Naturally, I recognize that this behavior is a little bit nuts, and I wouldn't expect any other parent to do it. Yet, there is a method to my madness. Allow me to explain:

First off, sorting the Legos is a Zen kind of task -- a nice break from my day job (which requires a non-trivial amount of concentration). Secondly (and probably most importantly), it's so much easier to build things out of them if you know what pieces you have and can find them all. And I like playing with them too!!

I get so sick of the kids asking for new toys all the time -- when they have plenty of perfectly good toys they're not playing with. Whenever the Lego collection is sorted anew, it's like getting a new toy -- the kids make some really imaginative stuff out of them! Plus they have fun playing with the stuff they build.


Can the Hero Factory escape from the kitchen where the villains trapped them?

The disadvantage is that my kids are always asking me to find this or that piece for them. The advantage is that I actually know where the pieces are. And most of the time they can find them -- and sometimes even sort them -- for themselves! :D

I believe in science and logic -- but I like to make things up.

Today I have a few more scenes from the amusing adventure of atheist parenting!

My kids made some good friends at summer camp. Somewhat surprisingly, 8-year-old Léo told us that his new friend (an 8-year-old girl) asked him whether he'd read the Bible! Surprising because this is Europe -- it's not like we sent him to Summer Camp in South Carolina or something.

Anyway, Léo recounted that he told his friend that he doesn't believe in God, but that it's OK for friends to believe different things. To give examples of things people might believe in, Léo asked the girl whether she believes in monsters, and she said she does. Also Santa Claus. This was another point that demonstrated for Leo that it's OK for friends to believe in different things because one of Léo's best friends at school (in Zürich) also believes in Santa Claus. I'm getting this second-hand from an 8-year-old, so the details are a little vague, but Leo seemed to indicate that he's always discreet with his friends with respect to not insisting too much that Santa Claus is just pretend.

My husband asked Nico what he believes in, and Nico immediately said he believes in science and logic. That's the point where you might not believe us that we're not brainwashing our own kids -- but he's only 9. He'll have plenty of opportunity to think for himself.

Then my husband asked Léo what he believes in, and -- after thinking a bit -- said he didn't want to say. Actually, quite a good answer for someone who's only 8. Nico prompted Léo to say he believes in science and logic, and Léo answered with the above quote: "I believe in science and logic -- but I like to make things up." So true! These are imaginative little guys who are always inventing stories and jokes!

I Am an Artist of Lego!

Apologies in advance -- I don't mean to turn this into a Lego blog -- but I have to show off my masterpiece!

It's a Lego tree-house.



Or, more precisely, it's a Lego stone house built into a tree.



I didn't have enough brown pieces to make it just a tree house, but I got some interesting new grey cave-wall type pieces when I bought a sack of 1 Kilo of used Legos from a second-hand store.



My 7-year-old Leo helped out by making some of the bushes and the little ducks in the stream. He was an enthusiastic participant right from the beginning, even helping me wash and dry the used Legos.

[me: I felt so Swiss, carefully scrubbing all those Legos with a toothbrush! my husband: Yes, that was very Swiss of you.]

How to build a Lego Crane!

A couple of Lego Power Miners sets my kids got had some structural pieces that looked like crane parts. So, when they dismantled those sets and we started building a Lego city, a construction site with a crane was naturally on the to-build list!

The crane pieces were so obviously crane pieces that I figured I'd save myself some design time by looking up the instructions on Lego.com or google for pictures of how others had built cranes out of these Power Miners pieces. Strangely, I didn't find anything. So -- since the crane I designed worked out pretty well -- I thought I'd do a quick explanation of how to make one.

Start with the stem of the crane. For stability, rods should hold the pieces together wherever possible (though sometimes it's not possible, such as when adding the turntable to allow the crane top to rotate). A round piece should be included below the platform (and connected with a rod) for added stability.

The crane arm also needs to be reinforced with support rods, and -- naturally -- also needs angle pieces to attach it to the base and to the part that extends above the base.

Then there's the cable mechanism, which starts from the weight/reel on the short end of the crane arm, goes through the loop at the top of the crane stem, and is directed by a moveable attachment that goes around the long end of the crane arm. Here, I've taken the little ball off the end of the reel axel so that you can see how the reel fits together.

The last bit is the crane operator's cabin. There's a lot of leeway in precisely how to design it (depending on the pieces you have). The only important part is to include a piece with two holes near the top so you can connect it to the top of the crane stem:

Then, all that's left is to put the components together!



Now, at this point, probably a lot of people are asking: "Are you doing this for yourself, or for your kids?"

Answer: both. I think that -- in order to spend quality time with your kids -- it helps to take a sincere interest in the things they're interested in, and talk with them about things they care about. And these kids love Legos!!! Here they are taking publicity photos for their own invented Bionicle sets:



I wanted to make a city for the kids to play with so that they'd see what you can really do with Legos when you get a certain number of them. And Leo absolutely got into it -- here's the city he made, inspired by the one I made:



Legos were some of my very favorite toys as a kid, so it's easy to get excited about what they're up to! Here are a few more vehicles I made for Leo this morning:

Why I'm a bad mom, part 5: The worst word!

Way back in part 1, you'll recall I was teaching my kids naughty words. In the years since then, I haven't gone out of my way to teach them naughty words (nor have I bothered to avoid using them), and I'm happy to report that we haven't had any problems over this.

(Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they probably say naughty words occasionally, but I don't notice because I don't care.)

I did tell Nico recently that saying certain words (especially f*ck) is a little like saying "Voldemort": Some people worried or upset when they hear it, as though the syllable itself had some sort of evil magic power. And it's important to keep in mind when deciding whether/when to use it.

But there's a far worse word out there. Leo has dubbed this word "the worst word in the world", and has forbidden me from ever saying it to him. Can you guess which one?

"Whatever."

Why is that the worst word?

"Because it means you're not listening to me."

see also parts 2, 3, and 4

Mommy and Daughter

This reminds me of my first post at The Hathor Legacy Do boys like stories about girls?

In truth, more often than not, my boys invent male characters in their imaginative play. But today Leo decided that the above Lego Heroes are mother and daughter. (Hint: Mom's on the left and daughter is on the right.)

Locked away in a Lego tower!

Now, I know you're probably all wondering, "What has Chanson been up to lately?" Here's the scoop:

In addition to my usual adventures at Main Street Plaza, plus promoting my last Java book (and tech-reviewing a new one for someone else), I've been very busy building a giant Lego tower:



Maybe if I lock my little son up in it, some princess (or ogre) will come rescue him or something. Hope he doesn't get away! ;^)

"I wish I were Harry Potter..."

So, my kids have discovered Harry Potter.

During our recent visit to Minnesota, Nico heard part of an audio-book his cousin was listening to, and away he went! Fortunately, we happened to have all of the Harry Potter books and a few of the movies already (since my husband and I had read them ourselves).

Now my two little boys are going around drawing red-marker lightning-bolts on their heads and waving magical chopsticks at each other.

Personally, I'm glad to see my kids getting excited about a story in a book. They've learned an amazing amount of science from videos on YouTube (I should post some of Nico's drawings of whale evolution), but I'd like to see them want to read for pleasure. So far it's just been me reading to them a chapter at a time (plus my Mom read to them during our visit), but Nico has picked up the book and read bits of it.

For the moment, I don't mind just reading to them myself because I'd like to start by building up the idea that a story read from a book is fun and exciting. These are the sorts of crazy new challenges modern parents have to navigate! Plus, it's fun to spend the time reading with them. I hope eventually, though, they'll get the idea that they don't need mom's help, just as they finally learned to swing by themselves (and stopped asking me to push them).

Multi-lingual Puns!!!

Now -- as you know -- we're currently living in Switzerland, the land of many languages!

I pointed out to my kids the other day how funny it is that the German word for cold (kalt) sounds a lot like the Italian word for hot (caldo). So we invented a joke dialog in which a German and an Italian are debating about the weather on a hot day:

Italian: Fa caldo.
German: Nein! Es ist nicht kalt, es it heiss!

(and so on, ad infinitum, for lots of laughs...)

Well just today, my little Leo (who just turned 7), used this same formula to invent his own joke! He noticed that the German word for fast (schnell) sounds an awful lot like the English word snail (something not fast at all!):

English: Look, that is a snail.
German: Nein! Das ist nicht schnell! Das ist langsam!

(and so on, ad infinitum, for lots of laughs... ;^) )

Give a Kid a PowerPoint...

Here's the latest in my (not-exactly-intentional) experiment on raising kids with technology:



One of the science videos my kids found on YouTube was illustrated with a power-point presentation -- one where you could see the filmmaker navigating from one slide to the next in the sidebar -- and they decided that they had to have that program!

"Sure, why not?" thought I, and I set them up with a copy of Open Office. I made a few slides to show them how it's done (and, naturally, they deleted all of my example slides once they'd made a few slides of their own). Here's another example from their latest slideshow:



It's called atom: forty slides and counting!

It's funny -- the program obviously wasn't designed for kids' doodles, but it works. And I can't stop wondering what it would have been like to have had all this fun computer stuff when I was a kid!

Meanwhile, it's hard to motivate them to read books when they can get information on any subject from YouTube. We limit their video-watching to some degree, but I don't want to discourage them too much because our whole family has learned a ton of Physics and Chemistry from Nico's science-video hobby!

So, for reading, I've resorted to some old-fashioned technology -- a technique that was used on me when I was a kid back in the 70's. I drew them each a calendar, complete with pictures of the stories they're scheduled to read that day. After doing their reading, they get to put a sticker on that day's square. And it's working surprisingly well despite not having an Internet tie-in!

(OK, well, that's not exactly true. After reading the popular kids' book Barbapapa, they went and found the corresponding videos on YouTube...)

Hanukkah Sparkles!

Remember the Hanukkah party we went to last December?

Well, I'm still sorting boxes from our move, and I found this cute drawing that Leo did right after attending that party:


Hanukkah Sparkles!

Vote in the 2009 Brodies!!

If you're following Main Street Plaza, you probably already know that author Walter Kirn won 2009 William Law X-Mormon of the year, and that he has publicly accepted the award.

Now we're following up with another series of awards -- the Brodies -- for X-Mormon online excellence!! You can vote for excellent posts, sites, and people in twenty-two different categories.

And, on a totally unrelated note, look at this drawing my 6-year-old Leo made in Tux Paint:


"Origami", by Leo

"And second-a-ball..."

I almost never correct my kids when they make grammar mistakes or other language errors. That's probably wrong of me, but I just think it's so cute when they come up with their own words and grammar -- like the word cracre-de-paix, which they invented long ago, but still use sometimes. They also say "virgule" instead of "vehicle" (virgules are a very important subject of conversation at our house). Sure, I could correct them, but they'll figure it out eventually.

One strange mistake that Leo makes is that he essentially doesn't use pronouns to distinguish people by gender. In Leo's world, everyone is he/his/him -- even people he clearly knows are female. Originally he was referring to everyone as she/her, but I imagine that he made the switch after male companions complained. I'd chalk it up to his bilingualism, but he makes the exact same error in both languages. (There are other cases where he'll translate literally from one language to the other, and it doesn't quite work...)

I just saw a new article on the benefits of bilingualism (hat tip too many tribbles). Whether it's beneficial or not, it's certainly cute. Remember the three dolls from the other day? Well, Leo decided that Mimi's name in French is "Moi-Moi." There's a certain logic to that. Then they decided that Jack-Jack and Incredible should have French names as well: "Jacques-Jacques" and "Incroyable." :D

These are S&M's, Mommy, not M&M's!

OK, you can probably guess where that quote came from. ;^)

My 6-year-old Leo -- who loves chocolate but not fruit -- discovered the remaining Skittles I'd bought for the trick-or-treaters. And he can identify letters just well enough to tell that it says right on the package that they aren't the treat he was hoping for...

And today's "expat story hour" question is: What did my kids think of their first American Halloween?

They absolutely loved it! Halloween (essentially in its American incarnation) is appearing little by little in Europe, but it's not like here. Their school had Halloween activities all day on Friday -- with the kids and teachers all dressed up in their costumes -- and we went trick-or-treating with a group of neighbor kids in the evening.

I remember having great fun at Halloween parties as a kid. Our Mormon ward was pretty cool, so we never did did any of those lame anti-real-Halloween substitutes like "Trunk-or-Treating" or a "Hell House." We had a fairly standard fun Halloween party every year with costumes, games, bobbing for apples, and haunted rooms with things like cold spaghetti and peeled grapes pretending to be other things...

So I felt bad that we ended up not taking our kids to any of the Halloween parties we were invited to. I wanted to, but it turned out that October 31st was the only day this whole semester that there was a (relatively) kid-friendly matinee at the Metropolitan Opera! And that was another one of the big cultural experiences we didn't want our kids to miss on during this stay in the U.S.: a trip to the Met!!!


My husband got one shot of the chandeliers before we found that photography isn't allowed -- even in the foyer!!

We went to see Il Barbiere di Siviglia, which the kids have seen a bunch of times on video, so they knew the basic story and the music. We all had a great time!! For the kids, just seeing any kind of show performed live (like a movie, only live!) is already exceptional, and they liked looking through the binoculars at the orchestra playing their instruments. And we got back just in time for trick-or-treating, so it was perfect!!!

Some Halloween I hope I can do this though...

It takes a village...

...or a galaxy?

Leo decided to bring a handful of glow-in-the-dark stars to bed with him: one tiny one, and ten slightly larger ones.

So, as I was cuddling him, I suggested that the tiny one was the baby, and set aside two larger ones to be the Mommy and Daddy. Then I asked him who the others were. Here's what he came up with:

3. the grandma
4. the grandpa
5. the babysitter
6. the Paleontologist
7. the teacher
8. the train driver

Then he thought for a long time to name the last two, and finally decided that they were

9. the French teacher
and
10. the "teller" who "tells lots of stuff"
:D