Death

How do we process the fact of death at age 6?  I know that my son tried to process it today, when I read him a children's book (The Forever Dog), about a boy whose dog dies suddenly of an illness.  The boy returns home from school and his mom tells him the dog is at the vet; the dog dies and never returns home. The mom tells her son that his dog will live forever in his heart; eventually, the boy is able to think about his dog and smile.

The story made tears roll down my son's face.  He didn't want to talk about it; he sat there looking sad for about five minutes.  I stayed next to him, dried his tears.  Then he picked up the book and read it again on his own.  I went to another room, as he seemed to want to sort out his own feelings.

It doesn't come up often--the fact that my husband and I are older parents.  We don't discuss it much with each other (not yet), and we haven't discussed it with our son.  But I do think about it a lot.  I feel an unspoken pressure to make sure our son reaches a certain high level of maturity by the time he's twenty.  How do you "make sure"?  It's not really possible to make sure.  But I try.

Right now he's getting ready to sleep by reading his book of Peanuts comics, and he's giggling up a storm, any thoughts of death very much in abeyance.  Thank goodness.

Cookie Fiend

I've always been a cookie fiend.  Before I began my low-sugar diet, hardly a day went by that I didn't scarf down at least three or four of them.  I'm finding that a particularly hard habit to break, as evidenced by the fact that even during this new low-sugar regimen, I've been finding ways to justify the consumption of at least one or two cookies a day.  "Oh it's just 3 grams of sugar, I don't have to be so rigid about things do I?"

Yes it's not that bad, and I've only had one or two small cookies.  But that's not the point.  I was going to stop eating cookies, cake, chocolate, and virtually all other sugar-laden foods, for at least six months, maybe a year...so every time I eat a cookie, even one with just two grams of sugar, I'm breaking the rules.  Need to stop.

Coding School for Every Child

Today--what a contrast to the art school; my son went to his first real lesson at a coding school...I know, it seems like we're pushing him too early for that sort of thing.  Trust me--we're not.  He's a natural and he loves it; he's been doing simple coding exercises at home for five months.  And he had a ball doing the same sort of thing with some one-on-one guidance at this school, which just started up in our area about two months ago.

I say, "What a contrast" because unlike the art school I described yesterday, my son was making a hundred decisions about what kind of shapes and characters and backgrounds to use, how he wanted his characters to move, what kind of story he wanted to tell.  It was a creative activity, moving at the speed of light--or more accurately, at the speed of 6-year-old, computer-savvy kids (which means,  fast).  

I never thought I'd say this, but coding school did more for my son's imagination than art school.  At least, this coding school did more than that particular art school.  I will keep searching for a good art class.

Art Schools for "Perfect" Children

Last week, my son did a trial lesson at a local art school.  My initial impression of this school was that all the kids--overwhelmingly girls--were sitting very quietly in front of their easels, and were remarkably well-behaved.  I thought, what a wonderful, calm environment.  And yes, it is wonderfully calm, but my son was terrifically bored, and I must say that I don't blame him.  He had to sit there for an hour copying a drawing of a robot's head--an activity that requires zero imagination.  The goal of the school is for a child to be able to copy as well as possible.  Even some of the best artwork that I saw at the school's web site virtually screams, "I am a copy; not a shred of original thought went into this."

For children that love to be perfect--to draw absolutely straight lines, to shade in colors precisely within a certain boundary, to transfer someone's else's ideas to a piece of paper--this class is great.  And there are a lot of kids like that.  For children that have at least a few ounces of imagination, and don't want cookie-cutter pictures that look like everyone else's--this class is horrible.  But this particular art school is fantastically popular in our community.

So many artistic activities for kids are designed these days on this cookie-cutter model.  The Suzuki Method is very much designed so that any kid can scrape out a few miserable notes on a violin, or pound them out on the piano.  Their parents are not demanding anything more.  I don't want my son to be perfect in the Suzuki sense, or in the way that this art school dictates.  I want him to experience art in a more visceral, exciting way than he does in these sorts of classes.

Sugar Adjustments

For the first time in ten days, felt almost normal today, health-wise, except for an occasional cough. Managed to do all the yoga, weight and knee exercises, plus jog nearly five miles. Helped my son get started with an assignment where he makes a poster describing his cultural heritage (he's not nearly done with it, but it's not due until December 16th).  We also went for a two-mile walk.  Yesterday we (my son, my husband and I) went hiking at a local farm, which was tranquil and free of crowds.   It feels wonderful to be healthy enough to engage in normal life again.

I made pancakes for everyone this morning...was mostly doing it to taste maple syrup!  I tried to limit myself to 2 teaspoons of syrup total, which is already about 7 grams of sugar, and almost succeeded...then had to scarf up my son's half of a leftover pancake which was drenched in maple syrup...oh well...

It's virtually impossible to eliminate sugar completely from one's diet.  So my new goal is to limit the sugar consumption on any given day to roughly 15 grams, total, and not exceed 8 grams at any given meal.  That's a more realistic goal than to say I'm never eating sugar again.

My savior where this whole no-sugar diet is concerned is Dreyer's Slow-Churn vanilla ice cream with Splenda.  It tastes like regular ice cream and has three grams of sugar per half-cup serving, and not that much fat either.  It's a miracle food as far as I'm concerned.  Another wonderful discovery:  Quaker Oats reduced-sugar instant oatmeal packets.  4 to 6 grams of sugar per serving, and it's still very sweet.

Back on the Wagon(s)

Somewhat better today.

Am going to have to re-commit myself to the exercise and no-sugar regimen, as I really fell off the wagon these last few days.  Managed to exercise yesterday, but the previous two days, because of sickness, did not; and, yesterday I gleefully consumed three-quarters of a PowerBar, about 19 grams of sugar.

I did manage to complete six months of not missing a single day of exercise, May 30th to November 29th.

So my new pledge is to abstain from any sugary food (including PowerBars) for the next six months, December 4th through June 3rd, and to exercise daily (at least 25 minutes of aerobics six days a week, plus one day of walking at least 45 minutes), and also, to complete, every day, my 20-minute yoga/weights/knee exercise routine.

Now, of course, I'm feeling tired again...

Will have to figure out how to balance it all.

Strange Bug

I was taken down these last couple of days by some kind of virus; was already suffering from a cold of sorts which manifested, for the most part, as a bad cough, then on Tuesday, was knocked out by an episode of vomiting.  Three different moms at my son's school have described something similar happening to their children in the past few weeks...so I am led to believe that there's some kind of weird bug floating around at my son's school.  Though it could have been food poisoning in any of those cases...who knows.

I remained wiped out on Wednesday (yesterday); it was hard to get out of bed and remain upright.   Didn't exercise; hardly ate.  Did manage to pick up my son from school, take him to his new coding class (which he loved) and cook some kind of dinner, then give him a bath--but was just barely getting through it all.  Didn't write in this journal; didn't do much of anything, outside of the usual parental duties.

I still feel like a zombie.  The bad cough is still there; I've had that many times before so at least I know what's going on with that.  I have had some sort of attack of deep coughing almost every fall or winter; some doctor years ago called it "bronchial spasms" but reading the Mayo Clinic web site, I think it could just as well be labelled acute bronchitis.

I had my yearly physical on Tuesday; was hopeful that the doctor would prescribe something, but she didn't, just said it would probably get better by Day 7, which is today...and yes, it is slightly better. But only slightly.  Hopefully, I'll be able to move out of zombie-mode tomorrow.