GoodFitFam

PRs, PB and the fun pursuit

The Marvel of an Ordinary Life

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Marvel of an Ordinary Life“Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

― William Martin, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

These beautiful words are important to consider in the modern world where there is constant pressure to enjoy extraordinary vacations with the kids, have the latest toys or teach kids Mandarin or the cello before they’re in 1st grade.

At five, the boy’s tantrums are less frequent but almost always occur in public at an ice cream shop or a restaurant. We’ve walked out empty-handed to the cries of “I hate you.” One, in particular, is probably somewhere on Instagram judging by the wide-eyed patrons of the crepe shop. It’s when they want something in addition to the treat is when they breakdown.  Ice Cream, I guess, is too ordinary.

William Martin encapsulates my favorite dad days. Short hikes and long days.  Fostering creativity and mindfulness will snowball into an avalanche of curiosity and understanding later in life.

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6 Ways to Become a Better Parent

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I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the reasons Karen and I started a blog is to have a place to reference and share our favorite articles, workouts, and recipes. The NY Times recently included some extremely helpful tips. Actually, it includes links to 6 articles, each with examples you can put into practice.

My two favorites:

If you want to take it a step further I recommend checking out this highly rated course on Everyday Parenting: The ABCs of Child Rearing

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Spicy Sweet Potato Ginger Soup

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In the past I’ve been mostly a soup purchaser. I love soup but I had zero interested in learning how to make my own. I thought it was hard. Turns out I was wrong.

As long as you have butter you can be pretty sure it’ll taste like soup. Making it good that’s a different story.

I made a Cheddar ale soup a week ago. Turned out better than I expected. It was 50% recipe and 50% my own. Today I present a recipe I made up because I couldn’t find the one I was looking for. I couldn’t remember if I bookmarked it, saved it to a collection on Instagram, read it in a magazine. No, bother. I used what I had around and made really tasty soup.

First thing. prep your food.

Ingredients

1 Tbsp Red Chile Paste
2 tsp Ginger
1/2 Scallion minced
2-3 Cups of Chicken or Vegtable Stock
1 Cup Unsweetened Coconut Flavored Almond Milk
2 Large Sweet Potatoes Cubed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

  1. Drop in the Red Chile Paste in a dry pan on medium heat. After a minute or two it’ll bubble and become very fragrant. This is the spicy part.
  2. Once the chile Paste gets nice and hot. Drop in the butter and scallions. Bring up to medium high. Stir a bit to keep the scallions from burning and to mix in that paste with the butter. It’ll be a nice dark color.
  3. Now add the cubed sweet potatoes and ginger. I used purple sweet potatoes. I thought they were ube’s but inside they were bright white so definitely not the variety common to the Philippines. Give it a quick stir so it mingles with the paste and butter for half a minute or so.
  4. Add in the stock. I used chicken stock but vegetable would be perfect too. Pour in enough to cover the potatoes. Add salt and pepper
  5. Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are tender. This will vary based on the volume and size of cubes but somewhere around 15 minutes
  6. Once the potatoes are tender add in the milk. This will give it a bit of sweetness to balance the spice. Bring back to a boil then reduce to a simmer.
  7. Use an immersion blender and combine ingredients. Simmer to get the desired thickness. Season to taste

    Top with cream and croutons


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Thirty Six Words for Butt – Lessons in Storytelling.

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….Captain Tushii of the Hi-Knee City Police Department tracked Keister over five states and predicted he would target the Tokus National Bank. So, he and Detective Gloot E. Uss, waited in the bank’s posterior for Keith to arrive. Keith parked his horse, Duffy, and strode confidently into the bank…

That’s an excerpt from a short story I wrote with John and Julian, our 6-year twin sons. I hated potty talk before I had kids. Now I want to dig a deep hole and dump the words butt, fart, poop and fill it with concrete.  With twins, potty words have legs.

The dilemma is how to blow up the potty talk echo chamber?  The solution? Add more potty words. Lots more. How many words for butt do you know?  Probably not as many as you think.  We wrote down all the ones we knew and found dozens more online. It was a hilarious exercise and butt is mundane when you put it against tokus or badonkadok.

The next step was important. It’s to give those words life in a creatively way. We wrote a story – The Scary Derriery.  In the story, we shoehorned a couple dozen ways of saying butt in fun ways. The kids and I mapped out the bones of the story around the ghost of a bank robber who uses too many potty words.  We often write stories or make them up on walks and car rides as a way to discovery and understanding; when just reading about something doesn’t go deep enough.

Your stories don’t always need to be about potty words.  They can be about how to be more grateful and optimistic, beat boredom or what bullying is.  They can be poems, graphic novels or wordless cartoons. Pick a theme or a lesson and a learning moment will present itself. It’s also something you can return to as a reminder.

The point for us was to build something together, learn there are many ways to examine a similar thing while improving their reading and not pretending we are Ronald Dahl.  If you would like to read The Scary Derriery in full click the link.

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Family Films on Netflix and Amazon this June

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Shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime for Kids

Our boys are six but think they’re sixteen.  They are obsessed with Minecraft and Harry Potter. Both are amazing but include mature themes like death and zombies.  I’m sure plenty of parents like us use Harry Potter as a measuring stick judging what’s appropriate for their kids. We’ve taken a pause at film four of the Potter series.  It’s gotten a bit too dark and the stakes too dramatic.

Netflix

I wish I could recommend Netflix’s Original series tackling history The Who Was Show, but it’s a tough hang for kids and adults alike.

Baking_show_for_kidsThe Great British Baking Show – Netflix has a show called Nailed It in the kid section. We turned it on and it kicked-off with crude language and things I didn’t want to explain during a cooking show.  We love the Great British Baking Show, it’s civil, educational and we all love it.

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure – There is a huge catalog of 80s and 90s films I grew up with.  For every new film we pick some older ones and most of the time the kids are into it.  Pee-Wee was one.

Cool Runnings – I was surprised how much the kids loved this. I feel privileged to grow up watching John Candy films and hope my kids too.

Paddington – I genuinely love this movie and the sequel should be nominated for best picture 2018.

Miracle – Add this to a Cool Runnings double feature.

The Iron Giant – We own this one and it’s one of the top 4-5 animated movies in the last 25 years.

Ghostbusters – One my kids said there is a curse word that is the name of a person in this. Not sure how he figured that out as I had the close capturing on and coughed over it.  Other than that and a few scary scenes this is a must.

Chasing Monsters – Monsters, in this case, are giant fish.  This show is a part adventure, a part travel, and the rest –  education.  Nothing offensive except maybe a story of a legendary fish who may have eaten a pet.

Amazon

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.  I can’t wait until I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark with my kids but want to avoid melty face scene for another year or two.  I enjoyed Young Indiana Jones and it’s a nice warm-up for the real deal.  For the older kids, all of the Indy films are available on Amazon

Hugo – Super entertaining film.

Odd Squad – Best kids show on TV period.  It’s not animated and the kid actors are incredible.

Zathura – We recently watched the original Jumanji and this is a fun watch with some dramatic moments and brotherly love

Nova –  No matter what your children are into, Nova has covered it. We recently watched the ones on Petra  and Machu Picchu and it was enthralling despite being geared for adults.

 

 

 

 

 

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