Tag: Lucas

Doing the Boogie

Fun in the surf

August 6, 2017

Doing the Boogie

Wild edge of tropical storm winds and the distant threat of rain do not deter my kids (or me) from the ocean!  So with a scrap of time before dusk, despite the rain (we’re going to get wet anyway) we were the one crazy group playing on the seashore.  There were three or four surfers and a couple in bathing caps with frog flippers who would walk way north of us, swim out, and less than ten minutes later be south of the pier!  I pointed them out several times as an example of the strength of the ocean.

We like to stand in the edge about ankle deep and let the ocean yank the sand around us, bury our feet and ankles, and giggle at how far we move.  The bigger girls get about knee-deep and toss themselves into the breaking surf.  It’s fun, sandy, and exhilarating.  Jaquline, Jillian, and Lucas divided their time between building wet sand forts, watching the rain wash the shells into the wave’s path, and “doing the boogie.”  According to Jillian, this is lying on a boogie board in the sand and waiting for the wave to pick you up and swirl you around for a few seconds while you scream.

We get to play until the first lightning bolt shows up or when it gets close to dusk.  Everyone watches for lightning.  Three other kids joined our group and they spread out like squealing smidgens jumping into the tumultuous white water.  We always talk about the ferocious power of the water on days like this.  One of the girls inevitably drones “see the power of water” in a deep dragon voice.  They create obstacles for it out of shells and sand.  They watch the waves rip entire mountains of sand like a hungry vacuum and suck it out to sea.  They are doing construction near where we play so even bits of rock are grabbed and siphoned out to sea.

Rebeccah says the ocean reminds her of God’s power.  It’s vast, almost everywhere.  Over 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water.  It can be calm and friendly and is the safe harbor for thousands of creatures.  It can be rough and destructive – nothing can stand in its way.  But after the destruction, the beach is always better.  Cleaner.  Smoother.  She says it reminds her of how when we surrender our mess to God, He demolishes it and restores something better than what was before.

I love that thought.  The ocean always astounds me.  I respect its power and love its beauty.

Lucas sees fun.  That is all.  He sees “doing the boogie.”  Of course, on wild windy days, he only “does the boogie” board with Mommy or big sister holding his back and the boogie board string.  Lucas has such trust and he doesn’t need to analyze everything to appreciate it.  Sometimes I wish I could step backward into that trust.  Turn my analytical mind off and just bask in the fun.  Sit on a boogie board and giggle when the waves try to move me.  Okay, maybe that just works for those who can’t order off the big kid menu yet.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Filling Big Shoes

July 31, 2017

Filling Big Shoes

We are always trying to be like someone.  Lucas is two.  He is always trying to do “like Daddy” or “like Becky” (what he calls Rebeccah sometimes) or “like you do.” (that can be anyone)  When Daddy got his hair cut, Lucas wanted “Daddy hair.”  When Jillian is coloring, Lucas wants to “color like big me.” When Christina is cooking bacon – BACON!  Lucas pulled out the bacon from the refrigerator before Christina had finished putting the pan on the stove!  He was jumping around, yelling “BACON!  My BACON!”  (We’ve never seen him this excited over food since the last night we made popcorn.)  After discovering that the pan was too hot for him to play with the bacon, he ran through the house telling everyone “Tina making my BACON!” and jumped on Daddy yelling, “BACON!  Me eat BACON DADDY!”

Although we girls laugh, I see this passion for food rather neat.  Lucas does everything with 110% excitement and passion.  He likes watching Wild Kratts.  When that comes on he jumps up and down and yells, “YEAH!  Animal movie!”  (Actually, that can be any well-done nature documentary that shows actual animals – I can’t wait to show him “A Zebra in the Kitchen!”)  He dances with joy when he’s happy.  He wants to be like everyone around him.

We were getting ready for a date one night and Louis set his Sunday shoes down in Lucas’ reach.  (Lucas had a pair of black dress shoes that looked like Daddy’s.)  Lucas climbed into them and said, “my Daddy’s shoes!  My shoes!”  He walked around the house for a while telling the girls “Me Daddy in Daddy’s shoes.”  Of course, they played along with this asking, “Daddy, can I go…”  Lucas has learned to laugh and say “why?” with his lips stuck out.

In the way a child wants to be like their parents, grandparents, or big siblings, we should want to be more like Jesus.  It may be comical for us to see a toddler in big shoes, trying to fill them, but being woefully short, but in the same way, we do not start our journey of faith fully filling the “shoes” we perceive ourselves trying to fill.  We aren’t perfect.  We try to walk as close as we can to Jesus.  Our aim is to fill the “shoes” God has given us.  Our role, our mission, our goal.  Our life here is a gift and we should enjoy it with passion!

Sometimes it’s rather funny what type of thoughts I have when I watch my toddler on his exploration of life!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Investigating

July 25, 2017

Investigating

One of the things I love about writing anything factual, like the Home Edge Readers, is the research and investigation I get to do.  I love to learn about something new.  I enjoy compressing it into a compact form yet still managing to include most of the important facts and unique terminology.  (Like “rift” or “Plinian explosion” in volcanology.)

As a Mom, passing on the love of learning is my passion.  Children are normally curious.  I don’t want to squash that.  I want to build on it.  I want them to always look at the world with wonder and ask questions about whatever they want to know.  If they want to know about something, I want them to investigate: read, touch, listen, explore, and learn.  By definition, this is true science: the observation of the world around us.

Early scientists from all cultures (even if they were still called by some title other than “Scientist”) observed and wrote or drew about the world around them.

When I watch children learn, they observe, draw, write about, build models of, manipulate, and ask questions.  Our natural curiosity needs to be fed so we always want to learn!

Consider this beach day:

The water was cold so only the older girls were in the water deeper than their ankles.  Lucas seemed to smell the November cold.  (That’s Florida cold, though, as you can see they were in bathing suits!)  He didn’t even try the water.  He started off by chasing gulls.  Seagulls in Florida have learned the art of evasion.  I think they laugh at these funny miniature humans racing toward them making odd animal-like shrieks.  They watch until just the last moment, and hop-fly about 50 yards away.  Their bright black eyes challenge said little human as if they are saying “you can’t catch me!”  Of course, without adult intervention, Lucas would chase a single seagull until he dropped from exhaustion. (Maybe this is a seagull’s crab hunting technique?)

But as Lucas starts chasing, he steps in a squishy, odd thing he hasn’t touched before.  Two crabs race out of the seaweed and waddle into the water.  Lucas jumps off of it and dances around it, laughing.  Jillian joins him and pokes it with a small piece of driftwood she’s picked up from somewhere.

“What is this, Mom?” Jillian asks.  So I explain its seaweed washed ashore after the storm.  They spend about ten minutes poking, prodding, lifting, and observing that one clump until Lucas is sure it isn’t dangerous.  Now he uses his new knowledge and seaweed clumps become toys!

Jillian and Lucas built a seaweed mountain that stood as tall as Lucas, but they weren’t faster than the tide.  They also watched the ocean “eat” the seaweed a few strings at a time and carry them off.

At home, for many days later, Jillian drew her impressions of seaweed.  Whenever we watched ocean documentaries, she would spy seaweed and yelp, “that’s seaweed, I know that!”

She “knows” seaweed because she explored it and played with it.  I want my children to know anything they want to learn about that completely.  To have touched, tasted, researched, and immersed themselves in it.  It doesn’t matter if the subject is baking, gardening, crocheting, fractions, nouns, writing letters, raising chickens, equations, times tables, letter sounds, zoology, biology, or whatever they want to learn.  I want them to dive into it and “know” it.  I figure the best way to teach this is to show them that I learn this way too.  I let them see me looking things up, studying various recipes before I attempt a dish, reading their algebra books ahead of them to “relearn” it, searching with them when they have a question I can’t answer, and researching for my books.

I want learning to be a passion for them.  Because once you discover a love of learning, you will always be investigating new things!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

DVD Books

July 23, 2017

DVD Books

I’m one of these people who loves real books.  The smell, the weight, the way my finger anxiously waits behind one edge of a page while my eyes finish it quickly – I’m immersed in the writer’s world and feel like the book surrounds me.  To me, nothing will ever replace the printed book.

I’m also a computer programmer; I understand that as the paradigm shifts with new technology some things go extinct.  We shifted from room computer brains to a tiny chip stuck in a device that fits in our palm – and this tiny smart phone is smarter than the room-sized computers!

Thus, I am a paradox.  I collect and buy print books but publish ebooks.  I love writing using colored pens in notebooks but I can format .docs and .pdfs for ebook and print submissions (everything is submitted electronically now).  Remember typewriters?  I skipped those completely.  So I’ll explore any method of presenting my books to my audience.

I have audio-books (The Home Edge Readers) as the short lecture format was easy to read.  The purpose of this custom series is to teach students new terms – so audio was a good idea as they can hear the terms pronounced.  My father is a wizard of production; he produced these.

He had another wizard idea and asked for all my rough pictures and illustrations for Long Tail.  I emailed them to him and he produced a DVD Book.  Basically, this is a DVD (plays in any normal DVD player) with the story coming up as one page on a screen with illustrations, printed words, background sounds, and audio text.  (“Grandma Pearson” reads the story as the words are on the screen.)  My girls loved this!  (It is now what Lucas calls “grandma chicken movie.”)

Vivid colors grab the audience’s attention.  There are rooster crows, farm sounds, running feet, and other background noises as the narrator reads the text that is printed on-screen.  Older children read along (like a sing-along-song video) while the activities and changing screen images keep the younger ones’ attention.

Further projects are on the way, but for now “Long Tail and Red Hawk” is our pilot DVD Book.

It’s another way to read a children’s book.  I like to compare it to a graphic novel with narration.

It’s entertaining, short, and fun.  I even catch my teenager sitting on the edge of the couch or leaning behind it, pretending she wasn’t watching the “kiddie movie” when she sees us notice her.  For about fifteen minutes, they enter Long Tail’s chicken world and they are hooked!

Learn more about it (and try it!) here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/187678255/

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Baby-Surfing

How one adventureous toddler gets his thrills.

July 19, 2017

Baby-Surfing

Certainly you’ve heard of surfing.  You know, the ancient art of riding a plank of wood on the waves?  Then we created lighter, smoother, conventional surfboards so we didn’t get splinters in our feet or stomachs and we weren’t worn out after dragging our plank to the ocean.  

What if we forget our surfboard?  Or, in our case, we decided to go to the beach on the “spur of the moment” and happen to have bathing suits because it’s Florida and a bathing suit is standard wear.  Then there is always your body!  ”Body-surfing” is when you catch the wave like a dolphin, with just your body!  You dive into the swell and the wave picks you up and carries you until it breaks, sometimes all the way to shore!

But have you ever heard of baby-surfing?  That is when a baby with monkey-grab-on power rides mom when she’s body surfing.  Lucas invented baby-surfing when we went to the beach.  (I’m sure it’s been around as long as surfing, but for us, it was a new concept!)  

The beach was gorgeous.  It always is.  The tide was coming in, almost high, and the waves were breaking in long, straight rows.  Perfect!  Before Lucas and I made it to the water, the girls were already body-surfing and their laughter sprinkled through the air like sunbeams reflecting off the water.  Jaquline is obsessed with “getting tube” – her term for catching the wave before it breaks and riding through it as it closes.  She is so light and fast that she can usually do this even with smaller waves.  

Lucas clung to my back and shouted “surfing!”  

He’s ridden the board with us before, but not body-surfed as he isn’t a fully independent swimmer yet.  (He knows how to hold his breath, paddle and kick, and get upright, but not really swim yet – he is just two.) 

But Lucas LOVES the ocean!  Well, Mom and Daddy went surfing all the time while dating, and the board he rides on is Granddaddy’s, so he gets it naturally.

The waves weren’t rough.  They were about a foot and a half, maybe two, but even Jillian (who is five) was body-surfing them.  So we jumped in!  We only had to go out about thirty feet to catch them.  The water was refreshing and about waist deep to an adult.  For Rebeccah it was waist deep, but for Kimberly and Jaquline it was eight-ball high (midway between waist & shoulders).  

“Whoooo-eeeeeee!” Lucas hollered as we caught the first wave – about a 20-foot ride.  I stood up and Rebeccah asks, “Lucas, did you like that?” 

Lucas let go of my shoulders and yelled “AGAIN!!” His legs were still locked around my waist but he threw his head back into the next wave.  As he popped out of the water he shook his spiky blonde hair and shouted, “AGAIN!  SURFING AGAIN MOMMY!” 

As an infant of 8 months, this beach baby started trips to the beach by racing into the surf, getting tossed back, and getting right back up and running out again!  This is the way of Lucas, so much adventure in that tiny package!  

Every time we caught a wave he whooped and hollered like a rodeo cowboy.  Every time I stood up at the end of a ride, he hopped up and down while still clinging to me and yelled “AGAIN MOMMY!” or “SURFING!”  Every time one of the girls caught a wave as we were trooping back out, he joined me in cheering them on.  

Mom would say stuff like: “Yeah, Jillian!”  ”Good job, Jaquline!”  ”Grab it, Kimberly!”  ”Nice! Rebeccah!”  

Lucas would shout: “Wheeee!”  ”Whoooo!”  ”SURFING!”  ”YEAH!”  ”BECCA!”  (Since we call my sister, “Aunt Becca,” he shortens Rebeccah’s name to “Becca” sometimes too.)

After about an hour or so, (No one in the ocean pays attention to time – they are having too much fun!) I felt Lucas falling asleep.  ”Are you ready to go build sandcastles?” (Trying to get him to the beach, he loves building – and demolishing – sandcastles.)

“No, Mommy,” he’s clinging to me like a monkey still, his voice sleepy slow, “SURFING!”  

End of the next ride, “Are you ready for food, Lucas?”  (Food usually gets Lucas’ attention away from anything else.) 

“No, Mommy!  AGAIN!”  

“Just one last ride, okay?” So one last ride, one last “Baby-Surfing” ride.  This was the biggest of the day, we had to go quite a bit farther out to catch it (as the tide was turning, the waves were breaking farther out, but the water level still wasn’t any deeper), but what a thrill riding it back in!  Rebeccah, Kimberly, and Jaquline joined in the last big wave – we rode it all the way in.  (Of course, the girls ran right back out for “just one more.”) Lucas was asleep before we got to the van!  Christina commented, “wow, Mom, Baby-Surfing wore Lucas right out.”  

Perfect trust, perfect fun, perfect day!  Thank you, Jesus, for the awesome rides!

Thanks for reading!

Talk at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Capturing Places

June 24, 2017

Captured Places

Have you ever walked through a place you loved so much you drew scale drawings of it and built models?  I love architecture.  I plan each building and area – in most of my stories, even down to the plants and what color flowers are in season!

Once, I walked through a house with my parents.  This house was three levels with huge seat windows in every upstairs bedroom – the architecture of its large, open, bright rooms inspired the castle rooms in The Princess and the Swans.

The drab gray stone buildings in the K’vell training complex in Web of Deception came straight from a series of compact, functional, barracks-style buildings on an old property we explored once.

The Ann, Mary, and Susan Mysteries take place in my second-favorite childhood home.  The inside of that house is exactly as it is in real life – including the wrap-around second-floor deck and the loft-lookout bedroom on the third floor.  I added the aviaries, fields, and barn the way I wanted them (the only real-life outdoor structures in the stories are the dilapidated pool and the little next-door house) but even most of the bushes the girls hide in are on the real-life property.

In the Adventures of Long Tail, the chicken yard is exactly as we had it in the house Kimberly and Lucas were born in. (But the time stamped in those books is just before Jaquline was born.) Even the hen house is set up exactly as we had ours with the 4-level biddie brooder and incubator on top.

For me, it helps to visually see places in my worlds.  Lego bricks are great for scale buildings!  I even make maps and blueprints for most worlds and buildings so I never mess up my directions as I bounce from one storyland to another.  Continuity is very important to me (my perfectionist nature, I guess, but seriously… if Long Tail’s hen house was different each time, or if Ethan went down a different corridor each time to get to the Observation Deck, wouldn’t that be odd?)

Writing also helps me capture the best of places I remember (or dream up).  If I love a house, shed, barn, park, or yard layout, it will be in a book someday!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Butterfly Dryer

June 22, 2017

Butterfly Dryer

My Dad calls them “butterflies.”

Little coincidences that God orchestrates just so.

It’s almost like God says “I know you need this, here you go.”  It can be something simple like a kind word or a child’s smile, something amazing like trust, belief, or healing, or something material like as awesome book, a home, a bonus, or a ride.

The latest for me was a dryer.

I do love to hang-dry clothes.  I love being outside, I love the fresh smell the clothes have, and I love having time to meditate (because hanging clothes is something I could do blindfolded).  The only thing I don’t like about it is the time it takes from other things.

Yesterday, I thought I was keeping up on everything; I would clean the house, go out to hang a load of clothes, come back in, and a new tornado had spun through.  We’d clean up again, work on school as the washer did its magic, and I’d gather the younglings and go back out to take off clothes and hang out new ones.  This cycle continued – between answering calls and hanging clothes, it appeared there was time for little else. (Of course, there was cleaning, cooking, and school work also done.)

Lucas bumped his head while I was outside getting the last load (the girls had him inside to escape the mosquitoes) and he spent about 30 minutes screaming “NO ICE!” at the height of his vocal strength while we sang “1, 2, buckle my shoe” to distract him while applying ice; so an hour later, in total frustration over this days’ craziness, I announced I needed a dryer to have more time.  As I was saying this (and running down the hall after Lucas to make sure he didn’t fall in the potty), I missed a call from my Mom.  She wanted to know if we wanted her dryer.  (I hadn’t told anyone else I needed a dryer, but several knew we didn’t have one.)

I laughed as I thought of my silliness.  Call it a coincidence, butterfly, or whatever – actually it felt like a hug from God.  As if He were telling me, “I see your frustration; don’t let a little thing like this bother you, I love you.”

It isn’t really the dryer so much as it was God’s impeccable timing.  He already knew these events would go as they did and knew me well enough to know I would be frustrated at my lack of time management (I sometimes wish for a 30 hour day, but I’d fill that up too).  The perfectly timed phone call was just a reminder that nothing is out of God’s sight.  I need to trust a little more and worry (or be frustrated!) a lot less.  I’m not perfect, but I know who is.  And I get to call him Abba (Daddy, Father).

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Hair Day

June 14, 2017

Hair Day

Yesterday was a misty day with the sun desperately attempting to peek through, but the clouds kept winning.  Louis decided it was time for a haircut.  We usually cut hair outside so I trimmed his hair while Kimberly watched.  Kimberly wanted to know how it was done.  Lucas was outside too, occasionally peeking at us from his mud-pie play spot.

When I finished with Louis’ hair, Lucas ran up to the stool, climbed up and gave me the biggest pleading grin, “my Daddy hair, please Mommy?”

Well, I had to smile.  Lucas just turned two years old two weeks ago.  He’s embarking on this “like Daddy” stage.  “Big boy panties like Daddy,” (I’m trying to get him to say “pants” but with six females in the house constantly saying “panties” it may be a while.) “me drive my car like Daddy,” (Grandma surprised him with a motorized ride-on car, and you should have seen his amazed face!) “me Daddy food,” (means he wants whatever Daddy is eating) and anything else that he sees Daddy do, he wants to do.

I LOVE his baby curls!  Lucas’ hair is dirty blonde and naturally curly.  I combed it a bit, wondering if I really was ready to do his first haircut.  His hair was between four and seven inches long!  It was so thick and curled into perfect ringlets!  He repeated with excited eyes, “me Daddy hair, please, Mommy!”

So yes, he got a “big boy” haircut.  He giggled when I took a picture to show him his hair.  He ran to my bedroom to the mirror and touched his reflection, “me Daddy hair!”  He danced around waiting for Daddy to get out of the shower to show him.

Kimberly thought this was the perfect opportunity to do her “Nancy Drew” haircut – I keep asking her, is she sure? But since “you have the scissors and I really want Nancy Drew hair” we did that too.  Add Rebeccah’s trim.  Rebeccah has beautiful thick brown hair and usually decides to cut it short in the summer.

It usually takes me a few days (or sometimes weeks!) to get used to the kids’ new haircuts, but they are so happy with them.  Lucas got up from his nap to run in the bathroom, potty, and climb up on the counter to touch his reflection and giggle – the entire house heard him shout: “Me Daddy hair!”

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

The Chicken Castle

May 25, 2017

The Chicken Castle

   It was one of those days when I felt productive.  I’d managed to get the house cleaned, was hanging my third load of laundry, had finished catching up financial reports after our move, and everyone was still breathing.

Then there was a squeal that makes any mother immediately drop anything.  It was followed by “stay in that castle!”  (Okay, no one is hurt, probably.)  With my adrenaline pumping like a bass drum in my ears, I try to breathe and respond without screaming “WHAT HAPPENED?”

Jaquline and Jillian had built a castle with the outside blocks and had corralled the 23 one-week-old chicks into it.  Platinum, Chicka, and Sherlock (yes, they named the chicks!) decided the grass outside of the castle was better than the feed inside.  While the girls squealed and attempted to catch the chicks (Mix prong-horn antelope speed with mongoose evasion & you have a young chicken) 19 of the remaining biddie flock fled the castle.

“Mom!” Jillian wailed, (I was back hanging clothes) “Only Kerjack obeyed.”

“How can we keep hawks away from you if you don’t listen?” Jaquline said to the chicks as they gathered in one spot under a billowing sheet.  (Hawks only have a chance because they have super stealth.)

I spied a teaching moment! Perfect!  So I left the clothes and helped them gather the chicks to the safe spot where hawks usually don’t spot them and the girls could attempt to watch them again.  I told the girls: that is what we (parents) feel like when we give warnings (like the latest for Lucas, “don’t try to grab the goose at the park!”) but children choose not to listen.  We know what the danger is; like they know the danger for the chicks.

Jillian looked at her shorts.  “Like when you say wear pants but I have shorts and mosquitoes can bite me easier.”  Jaquline pulled up her pants and checked her legs for bites, then announced, “but I have long pants so I listened and I have no mosquito bites!”

Bingo!  This day now feels super productive!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

Trucks!

May 22, 2017

Trucks!

     Lucas is almost two.  He loves trucks.  He loves food.  While all of the girls had “Dada” as their first word, Lucas heard the air popper and screamed “Pop-pop!” running into the kitchen with his popcorn bowl in hand.

Currently, his newest craze is yelling on the condition of the trucks that pass his window.  At home, it’s just the UPS or Fedex trucks (BIG TRUCK!) and Grandma and Papi’s trucks (PAPI TRUCK!) which enter the yard.

We had a friend riding shotgun.  She says hi, but Lucas pretends he’s shy.  A garbage truck goes by.  A squealing yell erupts from the second row, “BIG TRUCK!”  This is followed by two “PAPI TRUCK!” yells, an ear-shattering “RED TRUCK!” shout and a Publix big rig.  Huge gasp, “BIG, BIG TRUCK!  MAMA BIIIIIG TRUCK!”  Shotgun is laughing hysterically.

This boy can spot a policecar with lights off a mile away.  Those are “Woo Cars!” or “Please Cars” since he can’t clearly say “POLICE.” (This made an officer smile and give him a toy car at the Family Fun Fest – “WOW, PLEASE CAR!”)

Any toy with wheels is “my truck” or “my train” or “my car.”  His daily exercise includes fifteen miles of running behind a wheeled toy sputtering “rrrrrr” or “brrrrRrrrrr.” (If it looks like it should have wheels but doesn’t, he will pretend it has wheels and push it all over the house instead; examples are empty boxes, pillows, toy boxes, baking pans, and chairs.)

Today he discovered two of his wooden trucks in the last of the moving boxes and was cradling them yelling “yeah! My trucks!”  Scattered around him and overflowing his car shaped toy bin are probably two dozen assorted vehicles, but these were missing for almost two months and now demanded all of his attention.

What was lost was now found.  God does that when we come back to Him.  He loves each of us tremendously – He sees us coming from our “far-away” place and runs to us.  Like we are the only person in the world.

Isn’t it neat what images God puts for us to connect to His love?  A little boy with his trucks reminded me of God’s amazing love.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~ Nancy Tart

 

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