I made some of the fluff never fail fudge

[conuly]

Which is delicious, and very easy. The nieces took some in to school today, and Ana reported back that her friends decided that it is "better than Three Musketeers", a statement that would be more flattering if I'd made this from scratch instead of from fluff.

I seem to recall making that stuff all the time in high school, but I don't think I've made it since. Well, until yesterday, that is. I'm not sure why I stopped making it.

The girls were very hyper all day, even before the fudge, and after dinner they had a stuffed animal fight with me. That is, they attacked me with stuffed animals, and I used Eva as a human shield. Or I tried to, but then she declared this "the hunger games", a book she most emphatically has not read ("I got it off a book, but all I know is it's about killing"), and I lost it. I got completely pummeled after I collapsed laughing.

After things calmed down I went to retrieve my phone, and they did... something. I'm still not sure what, but they had these unholy grins and giggles going on. I told them that as soon as I found out why they were grinning I would be sure to put them in time out, but they thought this was hilarious and I was the funniest person ever. Their laughter definitely did nothing to reassure me.

We also had a doctors appointment. Now, on the way to the appointment I spent all my time reminding them to stay out of the snow due to lack of boots. And today on the way to the boat I had to remind them frequently not to climb in EVERY fallen tree, nor to slide down EVERY bannister, nor to jump onto and off the benches at the boat. Eva jumped getting off the bus and got me the nose, and it really hurt and we were late because I had to sit down and cry. I sometimes think that they are the most rambunctious children I know. I look around, and other kids are not constantly jumping and running and spinning. They occasionally do other things! But when we get together with other kids those kids invariably adjust to the nieces energy level, not the other way around, so then I think I'm unobservant or the other kids are stifled. I can't figure out which it is.

Comments

[kyrielle]

Fluff fudge? I am intrigued, and curious...

[conuly]

The recipe on the back of marshmallow fluff? You just use one jar of fluff, a small can of evaporated milk, a bag of chocolate chips, and a lot of sugar. Cook until the soft ball stage.

[kyrielle]

Ah, cool - I didn't know about that!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The other kids are stifled, dearheart, and they also probably don't have as good nutrition. Your girlies are exactly the way children their age are SUPPOSED to be: boundless energy, always in motion, always testing the limits of their strength and skill.

Lack of boots when there's snow is not a good thing. Do they not have their winter boots yet, or was it just a logistics error that day? Obviously one can't let a bootless child get her feet frostbitten, and trying to get to the doctor's appointment is a serious mission, not a play-excursion, but... perhaps you could go back, with boots and jeans and proper gloves, to climb the fallen trees and slide down the bannisters on another day?

It's so hard for city children, constantly surrounded as they are by adult-created danger, never able to just flit out the door at dawn's early light and spend the whole day outdoors, playing in the snow, climbing whatever they please with no one saying "stop that, climb down, be careful, blah blah". Yours get more liberty than most, but their bodies require even more than that, so... they bounce off the walls.

Can you channel all that fine energy into dance and/or martial arts? (I try to steer parents away from gymnastics: very high rate of serious injury, high levels of competitiveness, and usually not a skillset that will last into adult life.) I know lessons are pricey, but they'd be worth the price if they focused your nieces' physical drive into self-discipline and goals toward achievement and reduced the aimless, coltish bounding-about.

That'll go in a couple of years anyway, and then you're going to be amazed at how these wild leaping girls turn sedentary if they haven't got a focused physical discipline to keep them moving. Remember, Mother Nature planned for first child-bearing to take place a year after menarche, and even when that doesn't happen, the body's prepared for it to happen - leaving aside just the 'normal' exhaustion of the teen years, when they're pretty-much useless if they don't get 10 hours of sleep a night (which almost none of them do.) The change is remarkable; one goes from always trying to get them to sit down to always trying to get them to get up, and it's ever so irritating.

Sugar doesn't make children hyper. This question has been researched over and over and over, and the answer is No. A party atmosphere excites children and they get wild on account of that; then parents blame the sugar, but jacking the sugar levels of their ordinary food (without their parents' knowledge) doesn't change their behavior. Sugar isn't great for the teeth or the metabolism, of course - empty calories - but if the kids are bouncing off the walls, that's not why.

So, more terrific no-fail fudge all around, right? "Better than Three Musketeers" sounds okay to me!

[conuly]

I want them todo rhythmic gymnastics, there's classes on Saturday near their dads place, but we just don't have a spare cent. If I thought anybody I knew had the money to share I'd outright beg for it, but....

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Rhythmic gymnastics is so cool - that's my favorite Winter Olympics event. I understand about the not having a spare cent, though; times is hard. Is there any chance the girlies themselves could make some kind of barter arrangement to work for the price of their lessons?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The Hunger Games is an incredible trilogy, but it's very definitely PG-13. The first book isn't so bad, though it has more grim details than the movie - if you read it to them, your girlies might be able to deal with that one okay. The second book, absolutely not; in fact I'd rate that one PG-16 because of the psychological torture: the 74th Hunger Games were a walk in the park compared to the 75th, where the environment is engineered to kill the Tributes.

Very, very much worth reading - the fact that the author manages to sustain the first-person-present view through the entire trilogy and make it work is a tour de force in itself; the story is riveting, and highly pertinent to this era's issues. The first movie is very much worth watching, and has less graphic violence onscreen that most action-adventure movies do. The difference, of course, is that all the violence is done by children torn from their homes and forced to kill each other while their families are forced to watch; the most horrifying thing is that some of them enjoy this.

My daughter's friends are all over 18, and many of them were very disturbed by the movie. My daughter wasn't, though, and she thought the reason was because none of them would ever have stood a chance in The Hunger Games, whereas she figures that she herself would have stood at least some chance. It's funny; the picture of me in my icon there was taken by her in 2000, on the archery field, and I took one of her that same day, drawing the bow: -it's on my old computer in storage, or I'd post it - she looks just like Katniss Everdeen in it. She wouldn't have stood as good a chance as Katniss, though - probably only as good as Rue. There's no way your girlies could watch that movie and not identify with Rue; too much sadness for them at this young age.

*wry grin* They'll be old enough to watch it by the next Presidential election. I bet Mitt Romney hates that movie like poison; it came out at just the right time.

[conuly]

We don't take books from their hands, I at least figure they'll put down any book they can't handle, but no, we weren't about to push this series on them just yet! Have you read her overlander chronicles?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't even seen those - the only child I'm around these days is only two and a half, just getting to where she can handle real picture books instead of board-books, so I haven't been paying any attention to school-age lit lately. Probably would have passed right by The Hunger Games movie if my daughter had not dragged me off to see it after her 'sister' dragged her off to see it. Then, of course, I had to read the trilogy, and now I'm eagerly awaiting the excruciating second movie.

I didn't take books from my daughter's hands either, and when she was ten, she got all the way to the fifth Gor book (Assassin of Gor, pretty grim) before I'd realized she was reading them. I let her read the rest - don't know how far she actually got - after we talked about the stuff in them. The Gor books are not the most wholesome reading for a young lassie, but I do have to say, reading them before her sexuality woke up was probably a good thing, because it gave us a basis for a lot of discussion of male/female stuff before puberty made it all too personal.

LOL, and also a basis for a lot of discussion of gravitation, orbital parameters, and why just because one can imagine something doesn't mean it could ever actually work in anything resembling real life. She's grown to be one heck of a Plausibility Nazi in her fiction writing and reading, and I think early exposure to the vast implausibility of Gor had much to do with that.

The Hunger Games wouldn't have been her kind of book at that age, though; I doubt she would have made it through the first chapter. Unless I'd expressly forbidden her to read them, and put them on top of the bookshelf, in sight but out of reach - then she'd have snagged them like a snaggin' little raccoon at the first opportunity, read them straight through like lightning, and probably had a week's worth of terrible nightmares. There's really no point even trying to hide books from some kids - I know, because I was the same way. . ;-D