NaNoWriMo 2009

Brendan has officially won NaNoWriMo 2009. He met his 1000 word goal and then some. He's even illustrated his book. I am at around 46,000 words and will definitely hit 50,000 before the end of November.

I tried to post his winner image, but I'm having technical difficulties.

Things that make you go Hmmmm....

Here is an exerpt from a site I just found:

How often do most kids tantrum? And how long do tantrums generally last? The parents in this study reported that, on average, tantrums lasted for:

* two minutes in one-year-olds
* four minutes in two- to three-year-olds
* five minutes in four-year-olds

and occurred:

* eight times a week for one-year-olds
* nine times a week for two-year-olds
* six times a week for three-year-olds
* five times a week for four-year-olds.

from http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/temper_tantrums.html

Now considering that Bear has at least 4 of these short tantrums in addition to one to two mega-tantrums per DAY, something seems a bit out of whack. He's always been like this and we've been hoping he would grow out of it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I even did a tantrum log of just the mega-tantrums for a week and once I shared that with his pediatrician she referred him on to a group that tests for developmental problems.

We didn't do this earlier because both his pediatrician and I are very non-interventionist in our method of dealing with health care. She told me that his tantrums were severe, but still on the normal scale. It took the tantrum log for us to realize that he might have blown the top off the scale.

I don't want to stick a label on the forehead of a not even three year old kid, but if it will make life any easier for him or us at this point we really have to.

I'm SO excited!

I just got back from my conference and there was a package waiting for me. Inside of it was the book, "More Weddings, Funerals and Rites of Passage" from the Universla Life Church. What is so exciting is that three of my ceremonies are published in it!

Not only do I have published poetry from when I was younger and one article on shamanism in an international magazine, now I am officially published in a book!

Why I'm so frazzled most of the time

Bear is two years and eight months old now. He knows how to use the computer by himself and has been teaching himself sign language from a neat site called starfall.com. He also just counted up to 13 this morning and helped me read a book the other day not to mention playing Battleship and Bingo (which I think I've mentioned previously).

Wolf is five years and two months. He just finished the 2-3 grade logic book, will be finishing the first grade phonics book in about a month, already finished the first grade science workbook and is over half way through the second grade math book. He also loves chess and Sudoku. Oh and he is almost half-way through his 1000 words for nanowrimo.

Cub Scout Den Leader

I have decided to become Wolf's Den Leader. Since he's in 1st grade he was able to join Cub Scouts this year in the lowest grade group, Tiger. We now have four Tiger's and two little brothers in our den. I question my sanity with this choice. It's not as though I didn't already have ten million other things needing my time and energy. It's not a commitment of one year, but a commitment to be leader until he graduates up to Boy Scouts at the end of 5th grade.

On top of all that it really is amazing how the attention span of young boys drops exponentially depending on the number of them in a room. Only a couple of things in the den have been broken so far...

Halloween

Halloween is one of our major holidays. Basically we are in costume and out of the house for most of the day. This year Bear went as a T-Rex Kitty-cat (he insisted). Wolf was Annikin Skywalker. I was a school girl and Dragon went as the Black Knight from Monty Python. It is a costume I made for him several years ago and it always gets rave reviews. As usual all of the costumes were home made or at least home gathered.

We first went to visit a good friend of ours at around 2:30, then off to lunch at Costco with some of our friends. After that we all caravaned down to the Wharf and went trick-or-treating there with some more friends. We ended up with group consisting of a T-Rex Kitty-cat, Annikin, a school girl, a fairy, the Phantom of the Opera, a Renaissance lady, Freakazoid, Awesome Girl and a witch.

It was sort of a shame that they didn't have the costume contest and free pictures this year, but it was still fun.

Next we headed back to Dragon's store, went to the Harvest Festival put on by a local church in the parking lot. The boys got to go down a huge slide, bounce in a bounce house, and play a bunch of carnival games for candy prizes, all for free! They had a great time. We took a quick break to eat something and then Dragon closed the store and we went trick-or-treating in a popular local neighborhood. Much candy was had by all, but Bear wasn't up to the haunted house one family always sets up.

Finally we loaded everyone up into the car and headed down to Pacific Avenue for the HUGE block party that goes on every year for Halloween. The energy is incredible, the costumes are great and it's just plain fun. Wolf was getting a bit tired of it all by that time, but both boys were troopers and we ended up getting home at around 11 pm.