The Easter Alien

Next Sunday is Easter and my son has been looking for his Easter basket every morning for a week now. He's already questioning the reality of the whole Easter Bunny existence and I'm fine with that. In our house, Easter is the celebration of the Spring season and this year, I'm calling it a Spring basket.

I've never told him that the Easter Bunny was real (or Santa for that matter), only that certain mythical characters have come to represent the different seasons and celebrations. The way his brain works, I knew that he would know the difference between fairytale and reality at a very young age.

This has been a relief for me, because as a child I knew my parents were making things up, but I went along with it until one day I just laughed at them and called their stories fake and it was all over after that.

What my son is waiting for is the chocolate and surprises in his basket of course. He could care less who brought it, a big bunny, mom or space aliens! Now that I mention it, he would probably prefer the space aliens.

Florida Sandhill Cranes

Look what we spotted in our neighborhood!

I finally feel like spring is officially here.

These little guys are Sandhill Crane hatchlings. We have quite a few families of them here and they stay together even as adults.

The difference in size to the adults is so striking! The mother bird stands about four to five feet tall and their wingspan is six to eight feet. When they fly overhead ( we can hear them coming ) they create quite a breeze!

I hope to be able to get photos of them as they grow and track their progress. I do worry about the alligators in the waters near where they live. I've seen a few more of them this year as well, but I'll keep my fingers crossed for these new little ones. Happy Spring!

Children and Advertising

For the longest time my son use to ignore commercials on TV. Mainly because I didn't let him watch channels with a lot of them. Now that he is older and we are watching more documentaries, nature shows and such, he is seeing ads for all kinds of things.

It is somewhat surprising to me just what catches his attention, and I mean really catches it. So much so that if he hears one from another room, he comes running. I now get regular updates from him of just what new things we "need" right away!

• I need to get better organized.
• I need to lower my cholesterol (this may or may not be true, if I can ever afford health insurance, I may get that checked).
• I need to get more sleep (don't we all).
• We need a new car.
• We need a vacation (maybe when I retire).
• He needs a toy puppy that swims in the pool with him (he has a real dog that can do that).
• I need to be a - insert big name store here - shopper.
  

As amusing as this sometimes can be, I also find it disturbing how fast he is sucked into the ads. Even though I have explained to him what TV ads are for and he gets the fact that they are just trying to sell something, anything to anyone that will buy it, he is still captivated by them.

Thank goodness they no longer have ads for cigarettes, but I also wish a few more categories were eliminated or at least not shown until after 8pm.

I'm sure I'll be having discussions about why I don't need to "regrow my own hair" or be ready anytime "the mood is right", with my five year old son any day now. I don't want him to grow up thinking there is a pill to fix everything.

We already have too many adults with that problem and based on the increasing numbers of "accidental" drug overdose deaths, clearly there is not a pill to fix everything.

*vintage art from Karen's Whimsy.com

Signs of Spring

Asia thought my son's tissue paper flowers looked
real enough for a sniff. Silly kitten!

I especially like the Lego vase he made to put them in.

Spring is right around the corner!

Robot Kits, a Better Idea!

After a head banging weekend of studying robotics, I gave up, for now anyway. Too many parts, too many options, too much time!

This is the picture my son drew of what he wanted his robot to look like (note remote control in corner).

This is the non-robotic crafty one I made from bits and pieces.

Kind of cute, I thought. Thank goodness for duct tape and curtain hooks.

This is the kit robotI finally ordered for us to make. This one does move and runs on batteries. I also found out they make other pre-package kits for beginners to start with, yea!

Thank you Amazon.com for not making me buy a soldering iron and learn circuitry just yet.

He Wants To Build Robots?

My son's interests have taken a turn for more detailed subject matter when it comes to building things. He has decided he wants to build robots. Mom has never even built a model car kit let alone an electronic one. He has been building with the small Lego kits since Christmas. He just completed one of Lego's Creator cars sets that builds three different cars, in less than three hours. He loves Legos and spends time rebuilding them into objects different from the original kit too, usually robots. However, building stationary toys is no longer interesting enough and now he wants them to move.

So today we went to Grandma's junk shop (her garage) to find things to recycle into robots. I also found an old coffee pot, which I brought home for him to take apart (basically stalling for more time to research robots) and lots of odds and ends that I hope can at least create a toy robot. I was hoping he'd be happy with something crafty like these robots. Very interesting but, they don't move.

I also found a cool little website called "Build Your Own Robot" that lets you design robots from a selection of different parts. I think it was originally part of the promotion for a movie. I will warn you however in case you don't notice and your child does, there is a link at the bottom to build your own weapon as well (like a sci-fi weapon I think). Of course as soon as he was done designing his robot, my son wanted to know how to animate it. I told him that this program was not written to do that and perhaps he will learn how to design a program that can someday (more stalling).

What on earth is this child going to want to do by the time he his ten? He's only five now. The one good thing I have going for me is so far, he is a very independent learner. All I really have to do is provide him with access to the web and materials and he figures most things out for himself. Right now he is only reading at about a second grade level so I think I have some time before he starts reading software or engineering manuals (maybe)!