When I came home last night the internet was clearly not turned off. When we moved to our current house we didn't have the internet for a couple of months. Kindness, curiosity, and creativity were at an all-time peak. After this golden age of no technology we've gone downhill. For over a year I've complain about the kids plugging into the internet like a pack of wolves on the wrong side of well displayed fresh meat. They are never satisfied with one episode or movie. It's like eating cold cereal in the morning and then being hungry for breakfast. I've tried to think of how it can be compatible with our desired family culture, but it seems to be more powerful than my yelling about how they need to keep their rooms clean or start pulling their weight with chores. The internet was supposed to be turned off by Digis yesterday so this is the final binge before stopping until the beginning of July.
We have put it off so long for several reasons. Evan's premature birth allowed us to watch all three seasons of Avatar the Last Air Bender at least twice. Since then they're between Busy-town Mysteries, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and My Little Pony. My Little Pony dominates right now and out of loyalty to masculinity I feel it's my duty to oppose it.
We do have a plan for when the internet is finally turned off. Ironically we found many of our plans online. For each of the children Em has downloaded several learning APs onto the tablet so they can learn offline. I've pulled off almost a dozen woodworking projects from Em's "Yard Page" on Pintrest and Em has lined up enough mail-order Netflix DVDs to last us/her the next two months.
I have the kids pause the Ponies long enough to ask them which of my projects they think I should start. They vote for the wooden flower boxes They scatter from the internet for the time being and I tell my wife that I'd rather just work on the boxes with her. She agrees and we go out to my "lumber-yard" and pick out scrap 2x4s from the Barfuss remodel job. The smell of those old boards reminds me of my dad and all of the times I've been on the wrong side of a skill saw from him. The memory reeks of hard sweaty work in a trashy house on an empty stomach. I spent several hours last Saturday organizing this lumber-yard and the ordered boards might have been done by my Grandpa Spencer's meticulous sorting and stacking of similar old, but useful things. Most of the lumber, no, all of the lumber is second-hand. We choose some slats from an old pallet and Em says, "Before we do this we should clean up the backyard.
What she meant was the "yard" behind the fenced backyard. We have trash that Em has been hankering to clean up since David's clubhouse was broken into and ruined by some older boys in the neighborhood that sort of commandeered it into their "club". David seemed to take the cue as a compliment that he'd created something legitimate enough for them to take notice. The clubhouse materials were moved inside the fence, but the spirit of it stayed outside the fence. Maybe a clubhouse needs to have a real threat in order to hold any allurement to boys. Now that it's inside the fence the girls play in it. The mess wasn't visible from our back windows so I'd just changed the subject up until now. The weeds covered a lot of the junk. It was fun to clean up with Em. We did most of the work, but the girls came out for free wheelbarrow rides.
Where is our son? Watching My Little Pony? Yup.
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