We have now attended our very first ComiCon ever. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I love how we could all go and enjoy it for different reasons. TJ is the big overall geek in our family. He could stay at the booths with all the old comics and spend the entire weekend pouring through them. I’m the art fan. I love looking at all the different style and interpretations of visual art.  Especially, since having children I’ve found it hard to draw.  Skylar liked recognizing his favorite characters and posing with the people in costume. He’s put in a “sweet costume” request for next year. Milo liked the toys and the Star Wars stuff. There you have it. A family activity! Even my brother came! So we met this guy in the elevator at the parking deck. I can’t remember who he is. I think he’s actually from a video game Skylar plays. He wasn’t hired for this. He even had his little son with him! People show up in costumes and just adore having their picture taken with other conference attendees. Milo’s not a big fan of being too close to them so we didn’t have any photos of him.

He’s not always a fan of having his picture taken. That’s why there are no photos of him with his hockey pads under his batman shirt, so he would “look buff”. The boys souls were fed this past weekend. They really loved the ComiCon. They even had an artist draw them each a sketch of Deadpool for 5 bucks each.  When we got home, we trimmed up the paper a bit and framed them.  Each sketch has their own names on it and is now hanging in their bedrooms.  That’s pretty special.

Looking at these photos of Skylar reminds me of how he has grown and changed; no longer a little boy.  I can see his personality and his happiness shining through.

Milo has been trying to flip on the trampoline for awhile.  He finally mastered his own version of flipping so I needed to share it.  Otherwise the photos are unrelated to the blog post.

We had a full day yesterday.  We are usually a pretty laid back family, so two events in one day is big!  We visited the King 5 news station in downtown Seattle.  It was surreal and amazing.  It’s funny how our perspectives from one person to the next are different.  Our tour guide, the tour guide for the last 40 years, didn’t get the 4 kids at all.  She was trying to shuffle them along, and would repeat herself if they chatted, and did not want them to touch anything, even though some of the engineers invited it.  She is clearly from an era that says children should be seen and not heard.  Even when I would chit chat with another mom, she would come over to us, look, and repeat herself!  A couple of the news casters never left that news caster persona.  They knew how to talk at you and sometimes a little condescendingly (I doubt they realized it), but not really *to* you.  Very strange indeed.  The kids probably didn’t notice ANY of that!  Skylar was in heaven with all the electronics and screens and cameras!  He asked so many questions, he held up the group and annoyed our tour guide.  He realized right away that asking her questions was useless and went straight to the source, the engineers and crew.  They seemed delighted by his interest and so was I.  It was truly an amazing experience for him.

Prior to the tour we went to the park for an unschool park day.  We were the only one’s who showed.  It was cold, and I half expected it.  I guess our Vermont bones were perfectly OK with 47 degree weather!  There was another family at the park.  The dad was walking around the park and a little girl was following him.  She was clearly not happy with the game.  I think he wasn’t doing it the way she wanted, and he wouldn’t slow down.  So she just kept chasing him and expressing her discontent.  A few minutes later, they reappeared on the playground near us and I overheard, “Now, what are the rules?  No whining or crying or we are leaving?  OK?”  “Yes daddy”.

First of all, I *hate* “OK?”.  I catch myself saying it sometimes, which would be fine if there were a choice?  Please stop hitting your brother, OK?  No, no, no!  It’s NOT OK.  Sheesh!  If the other person is not allowed to object, then why oh why would  you say, OK?  I think that’s something most of us say all the time without realizing what it actually implies.

When the father spoke, in my mind I heard something completely different.  I heard, “Do not feel your spontaneous and authentic emotions.  And certainly do not express discontent with what I am doing.”  Am I right?  That *is* what he was saying isn’t it?  Why do we get so annoyed when a child starts whining?  Why didn’t the dad just ask her what was wrong?  I know that when my children get “whiny” they are usually tired, hungry, upset, or possibly, I’m just not listening to them.  All problems that I can easily tend to.  Sometimes, when they whine, I have a huge feeling of helplessness come over me if I can’t immediately fix the problem, but I can listen.  Listening helps them to know that their feelings are important to me, and they really are.

Why don’t people want children to feel?  It seems so important that they are in touch with their emotions.  While schools are turning out children with more and more cases of depression and other forms of mental anguish, it seems to me that we would want to allow our little ones to express themselves freely when they are sad or unhappy.  Of course we would never shut a child up who was expressing happiness on the playground would we?

I’m going to be very careful with my words.  I know someone who works for the TSA.  I need to make the disclaimer that I am in no way trying to offend or hassle this person.

With that said.  The TSA does absolutely nothing that makes me feel safer.  They make me feel violated and less than an American citizen.  When we check our bags in Cleveland on the way home from speaking at an Unschooling conference, they had us leave our bags and verified that we left them unlocked.  Dude!  That’s my stuff!  Airport screeners are allowed to go through your dirty laundry.  Literally!

Then off to airport security you go.  Leave your shoes, your jacket, all your liquids, and all metal in a bucket to they can x-ray it.  Baby has a bottle of milk?  Too bad, they need to screen it.  Little kids?  Too bad.  Make ‘em lose the sweatshirt and there Nintendo Ds’s.  Baby is sleeping in a sling with metal rings?  Too bad take him out and walk through the metal detector again or risk having an agent search you and your baby.  Actually, that wasn’t even presented to me as an option. They said, “we’ll get a female agent” and I said, “Can’t I just take it off and walk through again?” Fuck that man.  I HATE flying.  I don’t feel ANY safer than I did before 9/11.  In fact, I feel more violated, more untrusted, and less safe than EVER.

Someone please tell me, while I was waking the baby, or tending to my confused kids, or watching them take away the baby bottle…  how my husband was able to walk through the metal detector with this:

Make no mistake.  This is the sharpest friggin’ knife we own.  And we own a few.  This one will cut flesh and bone if needs to.  A quick google search for “TSA missed my knife” pulled up an awful lot of results like the three below.  How do you feel now?

TSA misses Swiss Army Knife but confiscates dangerous pudding.

TSA checks keyboard but misses large Swiss Army Knife

The TSA is a complete joke and not a funny one.

(BTW – I did not make up the titles)

In the end we were thankful they did not find it. First of all, it was a mistake. TJ always has the knife in his pocket along with some change and guitar picks. He’s had it since before we got together. He’d be awfully upset if it was taken from him. Not to mention the hassle that may have been brought about if further suspicions were put on him.

I’ve decided to migrate this winter.  Not only from Vermont to Washington, but from Blogspot to Wordpress.  I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time but the very thought of it caused meltdowns of epic proportions a little stress.  I didn’t have the time or the brain capacity to handle all the work involved and I was really afraid I’d lose content.  Now that we are all settled into our new home I decided to just go for it.  With the help of my sexy, knife wielding, super hero of a husband, the blog migration was fairly painless.  If you were a follower at blogspot, I *think* you will have to resign-up for upates on the right, and please bear with me as we make improvements.  If you are a new reader then please use one of the options on the right to follow me.

So yeah, follow me.  Or else…