We had a much-needed quiet January. Not a lot happened, and we planned as little as we could.

Over the holiday break, Maya had written a small composition for oboe and bassoon. She then spent literal hours getting her piece entered into notation software so she could print out nice sheet music and turn it in to her band director at school. He in turn decided to have Maya’s 6th grade double reed class learn and perform the composition as an ensemble piece in the spring band competition. As Maya explained it to me, sixth graders usually only compete with solo pieces, so this is kind of special. Funny aside: to this day, the piece still has no name. In class, they refer to it as “Title.”

Sean had a possibly pre-cancerous mole removed from his face around mid-month. The removal was pretty deep, requiring both internal and external stitches to close up. Wound care instructions were very clear, and it has healed really well, though even now in late March, he still has a scab where the incision was made.

Ian is very social and active, and we are forever fielding calls and texts from other parents arranging hang out time with friends. He also rides his bike all over the place with friends in the neighborhood. Maya, like her parents, is a little more self-contained. She is all too comfortable spending hours indulging in her various interests, enjoying her own company. We have tried to gently encourage her to text her friends, to arrange meet-ups, even to walk to a nearby friend’s house in the neighborhood, or invite them to her house. But reaching out in that way can feel overwhelming, so instead we offered to host her friends at our house for pizza and “Kids Against Maturity.”

That’s how it came to be that five pre-teens and Ian hung out at our house, eating too much junk food, playing games, dressing up and goofing around, and having PS5 battles. It was a mostly successful endeavor – only one brief fight broke out – and Maya seemed to enjoy herself, even if sometimes she seemed more observer than participant.

On the 21st, the kids had a snow day. It was only a very light dusting, but it was real snow instead of the icy sleet we normally get. There wasn’t really enough of it to play in though, so Maya and Ian didn’t really spend much time out in it.

During that same time, Maya chose classes for next year. Our daughter is so music-minded. Assuming all goes to plan, she will be taking her normal band class, in which she is trying for a chair in the wind ensemble group. Additionally, she has requested to take jazz band, for which she would like to learn to play clarinet. We are happy to encourage her interest, as long as it continues to be fun and motivating for her. Plus, at the instrument test drive she attended back in 5th grade, she really struggled to choose between clarinet and oboe. Now, if she gets the classes she asked for, she’ll get to try both!

The rest of January was mostly consumed with Ian building his pinewood derby car for Cub Scouts. He had selected this wicked looking tungsten skull for his car last year, but he and Sean never quite worked out how to incorporate it. It’s very heavy, and the scouts have to adhere to pretty strict weight limits (5 oz max). Maya has now aged out of being able to participate as a sibling with the scouts, so she entered the outlaw division with Sean (16 oz max – Maya’s and Sean’s cars both have a lot of weights sunk into the wood). The outlaws, as the name implies, have far fewer rules than the scouts do, and it was fun to see what people came up with.

I am normally not a great participator, but I volunteered to help check cars in this year (since Ian’s den is responsible for organizing the pinewood derby). The last day of January, I spent a few stressful hours working with another scout parent to measure, weigh, inspect, etc, derby cars. Thankfully, I only had to tell a few people that their cars were out of spec, and all of them handled it very well.

Bright and early February 1st, I went back to help check in any last minute stragglers, this time by myself. Given the number of check-ins, that is definitely a 2-person job. Regardless, the races were on!

Ian made an epic car with that tungsten skull as the centerpiece. He used paint markers to decorate this year, with much better results than when he just tried painting with brushes. His car was a horror-themed delight. He wanted to name it Iron Maiden – like the metal band – but I wasn’t sure how the wholesome scouts would feel about a car effectively named for a torture devices, so he went with Phantom Racer instead. Maya made a car with cut-out ears, which she panted to look like a dragon. She struggled with a name, but Sean helped her. Aahzmandius is the name of a comical demon from a sci-fi series we all enjoy (the Myth series, by Robert Asprin, who we can only assume was an Ozymandias fan). Sean fashioned his pine block into a surfboard, glued Stitch from the Lilo and Stitch movie on top, and called it Experiment 626.

Once the racing commenced, the scout leaders were models of efficiency. Each car in a given division races each of the four track lanes, to account for any lane variation. The highest time is discarded and the remaining three times are then averaged. This results in many, many heats being run, and they chugged through them like a well oiled machine.

In the end, Ian claimed second place in his den and also won a design award for scariest car, which was the thing we was really gunning for. Maya won second place in the outlaw division. Sean went home with a participation trophy, but to be fair, I suspect he put the lion’s share of his effort into helping the kids with their cars.

I had this sort of weird low point right before my birthday. I felt like I had been pushing people uphill to get all the birthday and Christmas stuff done in November and December. January was all about derby cars. For some amount of time, it just didn’t seem like anyone knew or cared that I had a birthday coming up. I don’t expect to be fussed over. In fact, I don’t even like to be fussed over, but several things culminated that just made me feel … I don’t know … disregarded?

Anyway, either the three bipeds I live with noticed my discontent, or hadn’t really treated me like an afterthought after all, bsecause Sean and the kids made me a strawberry cake with strawberry icing … from scratch. The cake was beautifully decorated as well.

The night of my birthday, we went to a place called Hissy Fit for dinner. Then we came home and opened gifts and enjoyed cake. Everything that evening was nice, but nothing made an impact on me like that cake. It was something I specifically would like, and it took time, effort, and probably a lot of Sean’s patience to plan and prepare. I’m not a huge dessert person, but I really needed that damn cake, made my people I love, just for me.

The week of February 10th, Ian was signed up to be the star student in his classroom. We printed some photos, and he put together a big poster all about himself to present to his class and display for the week.

On the 15th, Ian performed in a farmers’ market concert. The weather was on the cool side of pleasant, and the kids performed beautifully.

Because the weather had been so springlike so early, in the middle of February, the kids’ daffodils made their appearance. (Just a few days later, we had a hard freeze that caused those daffodils to droop, though they did no die outright.)

On the 17th, we attended conferences with Ian’s two main teachers. His English teacher told us about their “writing for change” assignment. She wanted the kids to advocate for something they wanted to see changed, and she offered up examples like rules they thought should be changed at school or rules or expectations at home or with siblings that should be different. Ian went political. He got permission from his teacher first, but what he chose to advocate for was getting rid of Trump as president.

He made a poster full of reasons Trump is unfit for the job, only some of which I recognized from conversations we’ve had at home. I’ll admit that I’m a little curious about his sources. At any rate, we were proud that he seemed to care more about the current political situation that gunning for longer recess time or more screen time.

Maya lost her screen time privileges for several days, and that made way for a period of productive Lego building. She had already finished her birthday cat before losing her screen, but afterward, she went on a tear. She completed her kingfisher set, a fox from a 3 in 1 set, and nearly all of an absolutely huge dragon set.

And as if all the Lego building wasn’t enough, she started in earnest clearing out a shady flower bed out in the yard so that she could plant it. Our yard has suffered a few solid years of truly terrible weather and even worse neglect. Maya is committed to helping me get it cleaned up (though that promise gets tougher to fulfill the hotter it gets).

Apparently, the creatures have been enjoying our hard work too. We’ve had foxes scurrying around our back yard on multiple occasions, and toward the end of the month, we even had an extremely fluffy skunk wander its way through. Add to that our normal crew of birds and squirrels, and we have a delightfully active back yard.

We ended the month with Ian’s blue and gold banquet for cub scouts. The fifth grade / Arrow of Light kids officially transitioned from Cub Scouts to Scouts BSA at this event, and that means that Ian’s den are now the oldest ones in the troop. I think for the first time, Ian was part of the color guard too. Maya mostly tolerates scout events (except derby – she likes that one). I think she was just delighted that they served pasta instead of barbecue this year.