All the Best

Mad Natter and I have been away from our Mooselandia home the past week or so, visiting with family. It's the first time we've been in since Mad Natter started his meds, and everyone noticed the difference, nearly immediately. We were lucky - before we left, one of my cousins invited us over for an afternoon to color eggs for the holiday with her son, and some of their cousins (Mad Natter and Mister Love refer to each other, and the other kids in their generation as their cousins, despite the fact that they're actually either second cousins, or first once removed, I never know the right terms).

Parenting Reality in the Land of Willful Ignorance.

Every so often we run into folks who just don't get what life is like at our house. They have an image of what a "gifted child" is in their head, and when our life doesn't match that image, obviously it is because none of us are gifted. I wish, fairly frequently, that our lives matched that image, but they just don't.  However, the fact that we aren't all bookworms who enjoy studying, who raise their hands first, or who don't have parties, but instead have Socratic Conversations over weekends, while engaged in high-profile careers which allow us to have a housekeeper, and incredibly flexible hours so we're mostly paid to just think...  Well, people seem to not realize that no, that's not what gifted (much less 2E!) is. At least, not by and large (I can't speak for people I don't know!).

At our house, gifted means three computers running while the television plays a video, and Spotify plays music. Half the time, there is someone either running through the house, or falling over, and the rest of the time we're all sitting down. There is no "mildly emotional" area, it's either fine or end-of-the-world.

Hand-Made Holidays

One of the things we've taken to in the last several years has been handmade holiday gifts. Granted, a large portion of that is because we're not exactly the most well-off of families, but it's also because a lot of times the holidays are a time when we all accumulate... stuff.  The state of the toybox is usually the listed culprit, but it happens to all of us.  So what do you do?