Aquarium update

The aquarium ecology requires that somebody eat the algae. Dale's research indicated that the best candidates to join our thriving community are a fish called a Siamese algae eater (not to be confused with a Chinese algae eater, which is inferior) and a little troop of amano shrimp. The algae eater hoovers along the rocks, snorting lines of algae and looking twitchy. The shrimp, though, they are really twitchy: when a fish gets too close, ping! they are suddenly on the other side of the tank. (Here's a terrific TED talk on just how fast shrimp movements can be.)


Snaisy seems to be doing very well. She's quite photogenic.


The guppies, meanwhile, are thriving a bit too much. Guppies are prolific breeders and at least one of our females has already had babies. These are fairly likely to be eaten, and mostly that's a good thing; we can't house many. However, a few of them seem to be successfully hiding out in the rocks. It is hard not to be charmed by something whose eye-to-body ratio is so very large.


In other crustacean news, after every bath, Aaron becomes a hermit crab.

Jordan quote of the day

[after I explained that I was crabby and rushed because I was very hungry]

Jordan: Sometimes when I am feeling grouchy I say nice words to myself and then I feel better.
Rachel: That is a great idea. I want to try that. What words do you say?
Jordan: Words like please. And thank you.

I heard somewhere that the four basic prayers are Please, Thank You, Oops, and Wow. (Okay, I remembered, it was the New York Times.)

Weekly

Piano

I'm learning to play the piano. It's quite an entertaining puzzle, in fact several puzzles at once: recognizing the note on the page, figuring out what key that is on the keyboard, learning hand positions, making my fingers do what that says, left and right hands doing different things, phew. It's like learning to drive all over again. Except this time I am not at risk of killing anyone; just driving them batty with 1000 repetitions of a three-note Mary Had A Little Lamb. Yes, I actually did that one night. Okay, I'm not sure exactly how many times, but I did it at least once for every setting on our digital piano, and there are a lot of settings... not only fifty different kinds of piano, but also sitars and ouds and steel drums and goofy sound effects and you name it. The kids thought it was great, especially the sound effects.

I would prefer not to spend much money on this project (for god's sake, we just bought a piano) so I am doing an introductory set of free online lessons. I am not really one to creatively noodle around, like Dale does; I prefer something structured. I seem to be one who wants to know I'm Doing It Properly. Also, I have no piano history at all (unlike Dale, who did take lessons for a while). My previous musical experience is mostly choir, which I liked a lot, and I did soak up some level of reading music there, but mostly rhythm and intervals rather than actual notes. Mostly I just memorized the song and used the music as a cue. I'm not counting the elementary school clarinet lessons with Mr. Gough. I don't remember those fondly.

Patched

Jordan went back to the ophthalmologist for a follow-up visit. He was once again a fantastic participant: he was so very articulate and reliable that they decided to use a device they had never used on a five-year-old before (it's normally for 13 and over). He did great. The right eye, however, is still not up to speed, and there remains a concern that the brain will tune it out. So he is to wear a patch on the good eye. The good news is, it's only four hours a day, and they need not be consecutive hours, so we can patch him before and after school instead of all day.


They gave us patches with entertaining designs on them, which Jordan liked, and he and I did some online shopping yesterday for more of them. He is pretty accepting about the whole thing. The ophthalmologist had a terrific attitude with him. When he went with Dale to pick up Aaron, though, everyone at school was very shocked and appalled ("Jordan, oh my god, what happened to your eye?!?"). That was rough. The next day, he cried and said it was bothering him and tried to get us to take it off. I felt bad, but hopefully we are assuring him the use of two eyes for the rest of his life, so we will persist. With luck he may only have to wear it for a few months. There are only a couple of years left in which the visual system is still pretty flexible, so, now is the time.

I tried one on myself, just to check it out, and I admit it felt pretty strange, like where did the other half of the world go? Plus it was just odd having a bandage on my eye. But I did get used to it after a few minutes.

Self-portrait series

I deal with the constant production of kid art by poking it all in a drawer, and then at the end of each month (supposedly), picking out the stuff worth saving and recycling the rest. One of the interesting progressions from this month is a series of self-portraits by Jordan. This one is from preschool, I think around November 2008:

Here is one from Mother's Day 2009, which I posted about before:


This one is from the second month of kindergarten (October 2009). He explained, "This is me with a lion's mane and it's Halloween so I'm wearing a warm jacket." I think he was covering for parts of the drawing that were unintended, like his hair going all the way around his head.

And this one was a big project completed just before winter break (December 2009). I think he looks like Barack Obama.

Who marries who?

Jordan's classmate Isabella expressed a wish to have a playdate with Jordan, which is rather novel because she is a girl. At dinner last night, I asked Jordan about Isabella, and we had something like the following conversation:

Jordan: She's okay. But I don't want to marry her.
Rachel: Isn't there another girl that you were going to marry? Anna? [There is a lot of marriage talk among the kindergarteners... I have been taking it as just statements of affiliation and going along.]
Jordan: She wanted to marry me. But I didn't want to marry her.
Rachel: Why not?
Jordan: She does not have a nice voice. [I found out later that she allegedly yells 'Shut up!' at people, so, that makes sense.]
Jordan continued: I would want to marry Sonya, but she wants to marry someone else.
Rachel: Who does she want to marry?
Sonya: Her little brother.
Dale: Oh, well, actually she can't do that. You can't marry your little brother.
Jordan: Why not?
[Dale tried to explain about what happens if siblings have children and quickly ran aground. Not only is it hard to explain, it was hard to even explain why that had anything to do with it. And is it really the issue, after all? or is it just a rule? This led to:]
Jordan: What is the rule about who can get married? Can a girl only marry a boy and a boy only marry a girl?
Dale: Well, at this time, in this state, that is still the rule.
Jordan: But Sonya can't marry her brother?
Rachel: You can't marry anyone in your family. That's the rule.
Jordan: So who can marry who?

Instead of just stating the law, it seemed like a good time to say what marriage means - what people are choosing, when they choose to get married (or want to). This is a contested issue to say the least, but as parents we get these little opportunities to say what we think it means, so, bombs away. But what is my ideal? It definitely does not hinge on making or raising children. I tried "You marry someone when you want to live together forever." It's often not forever... but maybe you want it to be? Must they live together (or want to)? Dale didn't go for it. So I tried, "You marry someone when you to make him or her your family." This is not only pretty darned inclusive, but also has the advantage of explaining why you can't marry your brother - he's already your family.

I wonder what the norms will be for Jordan's generation?

Mortar & pestle

Dale got me what is possibly the least new-fangled (oldest-fangled?) kitchen tool there is: a mortar and pestle. It's Thai, and made of bare granite, and it weighs about ten pounds. It's awesome. Garlic turns to puree in two good smacks, and I am sure it tastes better than minced garlic, because it has the oils crushed out of it rather than being sliced. In the summer I will make pesto (which gets its name from the pestle). So far, I have made guacamole, 'refried' beans, a side dish of roughly mashed chickpeas and green olives, and a marvelous pasta dressing made of pulverized garlic, black olives, capers, almonds, and lemon. Next up is curry powder from whole spices.