it's ok to fail

 

 I recently overheard someone say that she was "just the right amount of helicopter parent." Oh dear. I edged away from that conversation quickly and suppressed my gag reflex. The very idea of the helicopter parent is odious to me because I feel like it's fundamentally disrespectful of children and childhood. (But this episode of Portlandia is hilarious.)

There seems to be an assumption in helicopter parenting that the process of growing up is something to be constantly monitored and watched, cultivated carefully: add the right amount of water and make sure there's no weeds because you're adding enough Miracle-Gro.

And no, I'm not talking about letting my children grow up feral and untended. There are a lot of risks associated with living a normal, healthy life that could result in broken bones and broken hearts, hurt feelings, flopped exams, burnt almonds (when you are hoping for lightly toasted), books left out in the rain, etc. And hopefully we all get out of childhood and teenage-hood relatively unscathed, alive, and with all of our friends and family. Hopefully no one loses an eye.

So Sylvan wanted to make a fire. I said sure, make sure it's on a rock and have some water nearby. He got the bricks himself and he brought the hose over. I watched him smother a few fires and said nothing. I didn't need to. This wasn't my fire or my process.

He figured it out. And then decided to create a small blacksmithing forge. Something about pounding pennies or can lids. He thought of the safety goggles and oven mitt himself.

It's all about failure. Trying things and being wrong and being OK with that, and being creative enough and flexible enough as a thinker to move on to the next idea. What good is the answer if someone just hands it to you? It's like pie crust in a box.

Jonas is working on his 8th grade project lately. Each 8th grader at Waldorf schools create an original project during the course of their 8th grade year, with a timeline, goals, and a mentor or two. The projects are unbelievably diverse and creative. Jonas is developing a game, one of those crazy complicated games that he loves playing with rules that take all day to even read, those games that take a certain type of brain which I most definitely do not have. Here he is, doing a trial, figuring out the variables of the rules and potential ways they could effect game-play. My brain hurts.

I used to buy pie crust in a box. Ew. Totally gross and full of a chemical flavor that was nasty. And then I decided that it was just something I had to figure out how to do. At first I couldn't have anyone in the same room with me. I had a lot of failures that ended up in the garbage or as free-form, ugly pie crust babies, and I did not want anyone's help or anyone to witness my escalating frustration and sometimes yelling. They left me alone, believe me. 

I hope that I'm just the right amount of "I love you," "I'll be here if you need me," "I'll help you pick up the pieces," and "I'll be cheering for you forever."

some creative endeavors

Tamarack flowers/cones

Maybe you have made a visit to my new project already, but if not, I sure hope you'll stop by. Unfurling Ferns is a new little creative venue for my friend Kate and me. Kate is a new friend, the fiancee of a dear friend, and isn't it grand when your friends pick out great partners and you love them practically on sight? So one of the things I loved right away about Kate was her great photos. And after being inspired by A Year of Mornings by Vettese and Barnes, I decided maybe it would be fun to have a photographic conversation with Kate. 

Sewing books

scored for $4 at a booksale

We decided, since we also share a tendency towards verbosity, that we would keep words to a minimum. So how it works is that we each take turns posting a photo, giving the post a title, and saving it as a draft to wait for a reply. Then, the person who replies goes ahead and publishes the post to the blog. It's fun to share something like this with someone who I am still getting to know. Getting to know Wordpress is completely annoying, but it has some cool features which makes its user-unfriendliness ultimately worth it.

the bird fabric

on its way to being curtains for my bedroom

So how about this gorgeous puppet? The work of Joanie, of Primrose Puppets, when we had a publicity photo shoot for some local performances coming up this summer. The word on the street is: she takes special orders for any puppet you might have in mind. She dyes her own silks, has a propensity towards perfectionism, and has made some truly remarkable creatures and personalities (large and small). Keep this artisan in mind...

If we had TV

Sylvan may not have discovered yet another 

low cost amusement:

Marble in the Wok Lid

Friday night with one child

Since Sylvan was watching a baseball game with a friend last evening, we got to have dinner with just Jonas, followed by dessert and lime yogurt cake (from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg) and a game.

Me looking fab in my new apron

Something you should know is that Jake and Jonas have a passion for strategy games with about a million rules (Wizard Kings, Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne, Race to the Galaxy---I call this last one Race to Boredom, and I always win!). The games take forever and I usually forget many of the rules all the time, and just ask Jonas for his opinion about what I should do. He's very fair that way. Jonas is also a cutthroat Monopoly player and collects various editions, and I will never, ever play this game with him. Frankly, I'd rather knit or sew. Or watch my fingernails grow.

Thankfully, his two grandmothers introduced him to Scrabble (my cup of tea), and for a beginning player and speller, he did great. I look forward to playing with him.

So what I am saying is that finding a family game that we can ALL (even Sylvan) play, is somewhat rare. We have found lots of fun in Pick Picnic, which is great for all ages, if you can handle that sometimes the wily fox makes off with one of your flock.

Jonas scored a $2 game of Life at the Goodwill this week, circa 1991 edition. It is so totally devoid of strategy, so dorky in its "American Values," so patently ridiculous, but somehow we all love it. We pick our spouses at random (because you fall in love with who you fall in love with, right?), so sometimes we have same-sex partners, which is our token towards a reflection of our own values.

Boringly, you can see I drew the career of Doctor, but love that $100, 000 salary!

And Jake, last night's winner, started out as A Super Star globe-trotting playboy (he kept winging off on trips to Florida and Africa) and turned out to have also found a solution to pollution, won a Nobel Prize, among other honors through his collection of Life cards. But do you love this graphic or what?

You CAN be a winner at the game of Life (this was the advertising jingle I remember from childhood)! What's on your weekend agenda?