Transition nutrition

This study caught my eye because we struggled with Fleur voraciously eating after daycare and after-school care. She’d eat a meal’s worth transitioning from care to home. It made dinner trickier because she’d not be hungry at dinner time. It made me wonder about whether or not she was getting fed.*

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The study found children tended to eat far better than average in the hour after getting to care and worse than average in the hour after leaving care. Of course, the problem with the study is the child-care centers were federally subsidized and were required to feed along specific guidelines that are better than what most parents provide in terms of snacks.

Fleur’s care environments, I think, haven’t faced the requirements of meeting any of these standards, and so they haven’t. She gets better dietary intake at home than in care. Not that she got terrible food, but she’s definitely gotten more along the lines of sugary and salty snacks in care than at home. I kind of think KNOWING the food she got in that environment was not ideal, when we picked her up, we made sure to balance by providing fruits and veggies. I’d really like to know if care facilities not getting money to ensure nutrition saw the same unhealthy behaviors from parents.

Knowing her school gets USDA money, her breakfast and lunch are healthy-ish. Not great, but better than it was in daycare. The snacks aren’t covered and come from parental donations. They show this study *

* I think, when she’s with her bestie, she plays instead of eats. They talk, pretend, observe, and pretty much do ANYTHING other than eat when together. And then when separated: I’m HUNGRY! At best, we can get Fleur to eat the bare minimum.

New friends

We enjoy our time on the playgrounds around town. It’s not just one, but several. If the weather is nice, then we try to find time to spend it at one. I breathe easier when I see other kids there because it takes me off the hook of running around the playground.

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Fleur does have a cadre of new friends she’s made over the past several months. She asks for specific parks in hopes of seeing these kids. These new friends are ones she’s seen many times.

She’s quick to meet other kids and play with them. Sometimes it works out, and then we see them again, and she’s getting excited about running into this kid again. Maybe, eventually, the other dad will give me his number so we can meet up.

More often we never see the kids again. So, I am glad that she keeps making the effort.

The thing that makes me sad at times are the kids who ignore her. Usually they are older, have a friend, and are highly invested in that play. They are so into their thing they don’t realize she is wanting to join. She doesn’t do this to younger kids who want to join her with another kid.

Back hole sun

Fleur told me she was worried about a black hole.

We had an amazing conversation about black holes, types of black holes, our place in the galaxy, rockets, astronauts, and exploration. Like, THIS is the conversation to have with me. Something about which I am passionate, she has the knowledge to absorb, and she has enough interest to ask good questions.

She didn’t shut me down for talking too much on arguably my favorite area. And, that makes me happy.

She said she was worried about getting eaten by a black hole. I assured her we were safe from them. A little bit of a lie. I don’t absolutely know if we are safe, but we are reasonably safe. We’d know if one capable of tearing apart the earth was coming this way. Its gravity would perturb nearby stars and definitely other planets. We can make micro-sized ones, but they evaporate in milliseconds. With enough energy, maybe we could make bigger ones, but I think all the energy we produce in the world today might not be enough to make could take in matter faster than it evaporates. Maybe one day?

I hope to foster an interest in science to have more of these conversations.

Wag the dog

I ran across an opinion piece in The Royal Society asking why dogs wag their tails. Their thought experiment went to where I would think: domestication selected for the wagging trait. But, they added a nuance that excited me: humans prefer rhythms, and dogs wag in a way pleasing to our preference.

Fleur with Lexi who belongs to my aunt and uncle

They noted that hunting and shepherding dogs tend to have different amounts of wagging. Hunting dogs are geared primarily to working with humans so they wag more. Shepherding dogs split between their other animal charges and the humans, giving overall direction. so they wag less.

Interesting observation!

I like the idea.

My multiple daily struggle

This is about right. I read this from @structuredsucc and felt so very seen. It’s something I’m doing all the time from focusing on a work project to responding to questions without good answers. So much easier to live in work chat responding to everything going on.

Me: I'm just going to open this. You don't even to look at it *opens gmail*
My brain: *distracted by something else*
Me: Here's one email. Can you read it for me? Nothing else, Just read.

…30 steps later, the emails are done and I'm starting the same fight over chores

— Structured Success (@StructuredSucc) January 15, 2024

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It’s gotten worse in the past 6 years or so.

Game: keep away

This leverages my soccer skills. We use a ball, and Fleur tries to take the ball from me.

I am leveraging my feel of the weight to toss it over her, bounce it around her, or roll it by her. My instincts for when to toss it where I will be the one to get it are slightly better than hers on getting to it. Then there is doing it where she feels capable of getting it most of the time and does sometimes. I played goalkeeper for over a decade, so toying with someone with a ball feels easy for me.

It reminds me of playing the same game with my father when I was her age. She has one serious advantage over me at the same age: she correctly falls on the ball to maximally protect it as a keeper should. Like, I never instructed her how to do it, but it makes me proud she does. She copied my technique.

In theory, I have fast twitch muscles. I should excel at sprints. Her ability to challenge me gives me hope she does too.

She loves this game so much that even though she sometimes gets hurt, she doesn’t want to stop.

Earworm troll

The secret to earworms is we hear an incomplete portion of a song. Our brain becomes fixated on finishing it. It repeats over and over in our heads until we complete it.

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The Christmas season is probably pretty pervasive to many. The same 20-ish songs are covered by various singers and played loudly to get shoppers and workers and children in the Christmas mood.

Getting a fragment of a song. Or even someone talking about a lyric can infect us with an earworm.

So, go listen to the whole thing. I hope it helps. It usually seems to for me.

In my case, the fragmentation is Fleur getting confused about the lyrics of “Last Christmas” by Wham. She gets concerned about “gave you my heart” and worries about a transplant. “What happens if you take your heart out of your chest?” So, we’ve been talking about idioms and metaphors way earlier than I expected.

I sometimes throw out a lyric fragment in Ada’s presence which will spin an earworm in her head. It is super easy to trigger.

Squirrel nests

For the past couple of months or so, while trees lost their leaves, the nests in them have become more visible. Fleur asked me about one on a visit to a park. I told her it was a squirrel nest. She points out others. She gets really excited about a new one.

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The human brain is magnificent about noting where things exist in geographical space. Our hippocampus tracks them. The more we use it, the more prominent that region of the brain. The often-referenced study is of London black cab drivers who, to get licensed, must be able to take anyone anywhere in the city without a map. We use it for more than just an internal map of how to get around by car or by foot: our home, our rooms, our computers, the Internet. The hippocampus is our biological search engine.

Fleur practices navigation quite a bit of late. She picks up on where we are by mentioning landmarks. And she asks questions about what a place is near.

Oh, my car has this feature where it notes the direction of travel with the first letter of the name. She’s been intrigued about it more of late. So, I’ve been getting her to get a feel for how the directions are related to each other.

Monkey bars

The latest obsession is doing the monkey bars. I’m glad because it means less time I am pushing her in a swing.

Before Fleur could do them herself, there was this occasional interest until a few failures. Then she wanted to do something else. She returns to it the next day or within a few days. Once she can do the thing once, she practices it more until a couple failures and moves on. When she gets to the point she can consistently do it, she just keeps doing it over and over.

The latest activity is the monkey bars. Her playground selection is around, which has GOOD monkey bars, which she can do. I also encourage her to try other ones.

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This may show my age, but until taking Fleur to the park, I had no concept there were DIFFERENT kinds of monkey bars. It is really kind of cool because they encourage different skills.

The mammalian brain, the outer shell of the brain where we store memories, is designed for remembering valuable locations with good food, where there is danger, and where one can socialize.

Good food and socializing are dopamine activators. Understanding we will go to a good park triggers dopamine because she’s visualizing getting to do what she wants. Understanding dopamine triggers in anticipation of a reward is vital, not on receipt. This also means loss of the dopamine trigger before receipt can be painful.

I can see the confidence on her face as she holds the bars before starting, and I know that she will get this release. I also especially love it when she hits a snag, has a concerned look, and recovers, and I see that confidence return. That’s what I parent for: her developing this confidence in doing hard things. I get a dopamine run when she corrects herself.

Yes, I helped her visualize how to do the monkey bars early on. There were a lot of failures. She’s been interested in doing them for at least two years now. So, I’m proud of her for getting to this point.

LEGO storytelling

Fleur plays with LEGOs in the way the kids in the LEGO movie do. She tells stories with the minifigs.

At this point, she only builds houses. And has one minifig plays the mom with others as kids. (See Game: Family) Basically, the same staple of stories she does with Magnetiles, Barbies, stuffed animals.

The descriptions of what the characters do are entertaining. Especially the crazy features of the house are about the needs of the family.