Science Olympiad

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Simon’s mouth is awake, thanks.

June 2, 2010 in Adults, Progeny by J | 1 comment

This boy. He’s been a little late with the milestones sometimes, but when he decides to go for something, there’s no holding back. We’re not sure if it’s been the cleft palate, the small jaw, or the low muscle tone (and associated low body-awareness), but the little man really wasn’t all that enthusiastic about eating solid food for, say, the first thirteen months and two weeks of his life. He rejected the “baby-safe feeder” nylon mesh bag. He rejected baby-mush from a spoon. He rejected delicious morsels on his high-chair tray. For a while, he would only eat Cheerios (and extra bonus if I planned ahead to dip them in something nutritive). At some point, we knew he could feed himself (because we’d occasionally see it happen), but he wouldn’t eat unless we put individual food pieces in his mouth.

And then, one day last week, there he was, in his high chair, shoveling his own food into his own mouth. His favorites are still cheese and carbs (a cheese pancake might conceivably be his favorite, but I haven’t quite worked out the recipe for that yet). But he will also eat fruit on purpose if that’s what’s on his tray. Especially strawberry. Especially Oregon strawberry.

Now, maybe to most families the transition from the bottle to solids isn’t very groundbreaking. But to us, it’s like the most fascinating, earth-shattering thing in the whole world. I can put food on his tray and watch him eat it, without feeding it to him one piece at a time. Really, this is revolutionizing our lives. I know I say that about a lot of things. But now I can eat my own food, while sitting near Simon, who is also eating, and have a conversation. It’s like a date, every time we have a meal. (Mainly, his conversation is still limited to  “mamamamamama! mamamoooooo! Ayayayaaaaaaa.”)

So while we were celebrating (and hoping that it wasn’t just a transitory preference) the new eating regime, a new toothbrushing regime started at our house.

We’ve been trying to be really diligent about brushing Simon’s teeth (he’s teething, like, all the time, and has lots of teeth, and they’re super-adorable, and also sharp), since his “toddler” formula is composed mainly of water, sugar, oh, and some nutrients. Now, let the reader understand, Simon is what professional people call “orally defensive.” I couldn’t even get my finger in his mouth let alone a foreign object (c.f. food). So toothbrushing time was mainly a family togetherness experience where one parent would immobilize the hands, while the other one, while holding the toothbrush, would squeeze Simon’s cheeks together enough to expose teeth, and begin brushing. At some point, this would infuriate him enough that he would open up to scream, handily exposing the molars, which would then also get brushed. At some point, he got wise, and started screaming with his mouth clamped shut. Still, we would prevail, but the whole process took longer. It always seemed a little incongruous to follow toothbrushing with our family prayer, blessing, and hymn. But then, really, do you do the prayer, blessing, and hymn, and then follow it with toothbrushing? There was no real solution.

And then. One day (at the same time Simon started feeding himself), he just started letting us brush his teeth. He opens up voluntarily. He barely fusses. He also likes holding the toothbrush and playing with the bristles, or chewing on it. He throws a little short-lived tantrum if we have to take the toothbrush away. It’s been a toothbrush-attitude-180-plus-also-love-affair at our house this week.

At this point, we felt like we were pressing our luck with one breakthrough leading to another. (And narratively, telling the reader how very advanced your child is, maybe can wear thin? But I figure we’re justified because he’s behind in his skills. I’ll be brief.)

So bathtime: He used to love it, then he started screaming the entire time, for no apparent reason. And then tonight we let him hold the toothbrush during the bath. Problem solved. Happy bath, happy baby, disgusting bath-toothbrush. But I bought a pack of four, so we now have a bath-toothbrush and a real toothbrush.

In other news, I’m back from the Science Olympiad trip. Simon and Todd did great on their own, and I may just have to go on another solo trip, to say, Veracruz (kidding, Todd). And my team got a fifth-place medal (out of sixty teams) in Experimental Design (one of the twenty-three events).

Oh, and Simon got a haircut and looks like a Big Boy now. At some point, we’ll post pictures or see you in person.

We won Science Olympiad

March 16, 2009 in Adults by T | 2 comments

So I did my best to avoid this story in the previous entry, since I’m insane and writing two entries in as many days about current events — take that, my former companions in lazy blogging, he said ironically before lapsing into silence for another few weeks! …

Uh, that opening got too complicated. Here’s the upshot: J’s Science Olympiad team won yesterday for the third time in as many years, earning them the right to advance to the national Science Olympiad competition this May in Augusta, Georgia — which competition the careful reader will note J is not attending (somewhat sadly) for the first time, since we will almost certainly have a beautiful new baby to care for and teach simple ion formulae and basic music theory to and whatnot.

But eyes on the prize(s): we won! Huzzah!

Actually, this is a somewhat tricky thing for me to exult in (to be cockahoop, if you will). First off, while winning any competition is reason for happiness, it should be noted that there aren’t a lot of schools competing in Science Olympiad in Oregon — five this year — so the state competition is a bit more like a regional event in more competitive states (like just across the Columbia in Washington, where there are over 100; this also makes hobby shops in Portland suburb Vancouver, Washington much more likely to be able to offer advice on whether you want to use balsa or bass wood in building your elevated bridge for Science Olympiad, say).

Second, there is the awkward nature of being associated with a team that has won first place every year it’s competed. I don’t want our team to become the Yankees, if you will, of Oregon Science Olympiad. The other schools also worked hard, were worthy competitors, won many medals, and I hope will continue to compete for years to come. I was especially impressed by the newcomers this year from Sunset, which fielded only half a team (in terms of the maximum possible), and yet won third place and no small number of medals, including several golds.

But in the end, our team did better across the board and won, and I can’t help but be happy for them. While there were times I was worried they weren’t working hard enough, in the end they worked really hard and pulled it off. And, thinking back to my own very, very late nights (occasionally becoming mornings) of last-minute work in high school, I can’t really fault them. Too much.

And now, some notes from the Science Olympiad.

As can be seen at the national Science Olympiad site, www.soinc.org (pronounced “soink!”), there are corporate sponsors, most of whom are what you might expect in the whole “promoting science and engineering among the youth” milieu: DuPont, Texas Instruments, 3M. There are, however, two sponsors I find a bit … odd, if nonetheless appropriate. One is the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, sponsoring It’s About Time, a competition in part about building a functional time-keeping device. I guess I’m just surprised that such an association has apparently as much largesse as your corporations that I assume are generally much better funded. Also: watch and clock collectors? Really? The association of, you know, clock builders was too busy?

And then there is Egg-O-Naut, an event in which the competitors build water-powered bottle rockets, with the intent of having an egg-bearing capsule separate from the main rocket in mid-flight and make it safely back to earth as slowly as possible. Perhaps you saw this coming, but that event is sponsored by none other than the American Egg Board, the people who brought you “The Incredible, Edible Egg” campaign. Actually, they’re still bringing it to you, it turns out — and brought several bright-yellow “Incredible!” egg-picturing t-shirts for the winners of said event, which was our team. I will refrain from speculating as to whether the t-shirt or the gold medal was the better prize.

Regarding Egg-O-Naut, that was a rather difficult event at the tournament, given the strong wind and rains that plagued the area. But the Egg-O-Nautery must go on, as they say, and so most of the rockets, designed for much more favorable conditions, were, my friend, a-blowin’ in the wind after a prematurely short ascent. The winning rocket faced even more difficult conditions, as one section of it — thankfully, not the egg-bearing part — was also run over by a car, what with the event taking place in a parking lot, the winds having carried it beyond the car-free section of said lot. Regardless, the egg survived.

The events at such tournaments are supervised by volunteers, who, in addition to coming from the various competing schools, are also pulled from local Industry, as the academics say. This year, J also managed to snag some of our friends (who do, after all, work in Industry) to supervise, and it was really fun to see them working with the events and kids we’ve come to know so well. Even more fun was hearing that they enjoyed preparing tests or seeing what the kids had come up with. What can I say, we’ve got good nerd friends.

Our team is also, not surprisingly, blessed with many good nerd parents, several of whom helped out over the season as assistant coaches of sorts. Given that these parents come from engineering backgrounds, it’s not too surprising that our team did especially well in the engineering events this year (in previous years, we had been stronger at the knowledge-based test events). And yet this was no case of overbearing parents doing all the work. On the Trajectory event, involving the construction of a launching device that can hit any target within certain parameters, made her own unique mark on the event — she enjoys sewing in addition to Science Olympiad, and I couldn’t help but notice that her device’s launching mechanism involved a Rube-Goldbergian use of fabric scissors to cut through embroidery floss to send her projectile flying. It’s all very clever and endearing, frankly.

I’d write more, but frankly, editing this post has already prevented me from posting twice in one day. I’d hate further writing and editing to prevent me from a still-unprecedented twice-in-two-days series. So, yeah: Science Olympiad! Huzzah!

We survived Science Olympiad

March 15, 2009 in Adults by T | 1 comment

Yesterday was Oregon’s state Science Olympiad competition — a science competition with many different types of events that the clever among you will note is very Olympic in nature — which J coached for the third year in a row for the school where she’s also a science teacher.

(Here’s where I catch my breath from the wreckless pace of this blog entry, what with the writing about events mere hours after the events transpired and all. What do I think this blog is, some sort of newspaper with fancy, fact-filled ledes? No, really this entry is less about describing our lives and more about shaming our friends with their new blogs but less-recent posts — less about information, more about competition, as it’s meant to be on the Internet.)

In any other year, this would be just another story about how J coached and I helped (occasionally even assistant-coaching) and the girls worked hard and so on. But those paying attention or otherwise in-the-know know that, in addition to coaching an award-winning team, J is also 37 weeks pregnant. And we’re moving into our new house next week. Oh, and J was also one of three people running this year’s Oregon Science Olympiad competition.

In short: [mild exclamation of your choice]! What were we thinking? What? Were we thinking?

Yes, well. I won’t say it hasn’t been one of the most stressful periods of our life together — indeed, while I usually consider myself a fairly laid-back kind of guy, I haven’t been this stressed since late college. Which is exciting, because perhaps it means that my time of stressful-college-nightmares-as-dreamworld-metaphor has come to an end, henceforth to be replaced by nightmares about hiring contractors, packing boxes, and working twelve hours at a science competition.

All of which sounds far too whiny. With the competition now over, and one fairly major item on our checklist now largely checked off (for simplicity’s sake, I will simply ignore any preparations needed after the competition … but more about that in the next entry), I’m already in “happy retrospective” mode vis-a-vis Science Olympiad: “It was all worth it, to see the team having competed and worked so hard!” And so on. Hopefully, the following weeks will see similar shifts in opinions about buying and moving into a new house, and the final days of pregnancy.

And while it can be trite, after a endeavor has been successfully completed, to thank God (I’m thinking here of the occasional televised award ceremony winner), I really can’t see how we could have made it this far without him. It’s easy enough to ignore his blessings when I feel in control of things, when I have a plan, when I know how everything is going to play out.

But in times like this, when I come home from a stressful time at work to a house that is full — but not yet full enough — of boxes and calendar full of activities that do not lend themselves to filling more boxes, not to mention the occasional, looming feeling that I am ill-prepared for my imminent parenthood and thus already a bad father … well, there’s precious little else to lean on besides God (and the blessings he puts in our lives, namely family and friends). At times like this, trusting merely in my own abilities leads me to lying awake two hours before I’m supposed to get up, quietly freaking out. And while I’ve certainly tried that approach a lot lately, it hasn’t generally been one I would dub successful.

Anyhow, that’s done. Phew. Thank God.