C Tann-Starr

Life With Wee People: Mother's Day Musings (Every Day Is Mother's Day)

I have been writing this post since May. I keep deleting it. There are so many things that I can say about living and caring for learning disabled children. They are brilliant in some regards and clueless in another. They present with the quirkiest personalities I have ever seen. You never know a person until you live with them. I find myself wondering what my kids think about living with me (LOL).

I have CyberBabies. They have digital expectations. They expect to see themselves roaming across the Internet on Facebook, YouTube and their Mama's blog posts. They actually turn on the computer to look for themselves (LOL). It's really neat. Noah sits in front and Stephen climbs up on the chair so he can lean across his back, put his arms around his neck and watch what ever Noah decides they should be looking at in YouTube over his shoulder. It makes me very happy to see Noah so proud to be the older brother in control of their snacks and entertainment. He takes his job very seriously. Snack-age is serious business in my house (LOL).

When they play nice I find myself thinking that every day is mother's day. Children are a blessing. They are a gift from God. You have to enjoy them when you can because you have no idea how much time you, or anyone else, has. I was thinking I would like to do something special for the pookies. The little minions have been such a joy to tease this week. We have tickets to the Museum we have yet to use. I think it's time to use 'em.

Lately, Noah's complaint has been the fact that we haven't been exploring enough houses. My boy has actually been telling me he wants to see a house. Hmm... that's what I get for convincing them they are mini-Realtors-in-training (LOL). Guess it's time for me to do another turtle run. Except I am not going to show him a regular house. I am going to show him buildings that he previously found very interesting that people do not live in. We're going to do landmarks and Museums. Technically they are houses... They are home to knowledge.

My pookies could use a culture break. How about you? Wanna do Manhattan with the wee people? I do... Was there yesterday and had a great time. Here's a little eye candy from my run with my blogging buddies in the rain (LOL). Shall be talking more about this later. ;-)

ActiveRain Group Club Chaos Icon

I had fun creating this bit of art. I've been working on it all morning. Seems a couple of the bay-bays wanted note cards and mugs (LOL). I hear a tee shirt may be in order. I second the motion. Hmm... Whaddaya' know... Change is good (LOL). ;-)

I love the ActiveRain Group Club Chaos because that's where my virtual family resides. It's my favorite place to be when I want to visit the people living in my computer. Yesterday, I took my wee people on an eye candy hunt to the Prospect Park Zoo just so I could photograph the Monarch butterflies. I actually shot several species (and a few animals) since I hate wasting a chance to collect some eye candy. They have a neat little collection on location in orientation and discovery for the kids to see and learn about. Every so often the butterfly collection changes (I suspect when wee people accidentally drop the glass frames - LOL).

My wee people are very entertaining little men to take on a joy ride. We enjoyed a group play-date in Brooklyn and roamed the park and zoo on a fun photo-shoot so I could populate the Life With Wee People series. The shorties are being featured on the Outside Blog Minion Report, ActiveRain Cartoon Network, Club Chaos Agents.com and CyberMinions.net. They are two of my favorite subjects to use when it comes to creating and illustrating graphic art blurbs. My boys supply me with a lot of material to work with (LOL).

The fun thing is, being wee people, they don't realize they're working. I pay them in M&Ms with peanuts, of course (LMAO).

Stay tuned for a peek of the Prospect Park Zoo in the next Life With Wee People Localism blog post entitled Zoo Minions. :-)

Outside Blog Minion Report ClubChaosAgents.com CyberMinions.net TannStarr.com

Outside Blog Minion Report: An Interview With George Hartman

Carolyn Tann-Starr

My interview with George Hartman regarding Desktop Publishing was not only educational, it was a tremendous bit of mad fun. He shared a wealth of useful information and was kind enough to bring one of his portfolios for me to peek at. Turns out it was full of the original art for one of his comic book publications and also contained material yet to be published.

I was inspired, so I created two Outside Blog Minion Report covers. I couldn't figure out which one to use so I decided to use them both (LOL). I knew I had to, just for the chance to showcase a few of the artists he is working with. My fave illustration is the cheeky nurse on the left. Did you know the artist who created that tasty little treat is from Brazil?

Here's the line up of talent he tapped for the project: George Hartman, Jeff Sorrell, Greg Anderson, C. William Cooke, Elisa Feliz, Kotsu, Empro Maciek, Martin Malin, Chris Moshier, Richard Pech and Carolina Pontes. Turns out all you need to do is match the right writers with the right artists and send your scanned files off to a digital press. Am I over simplifying the process? Yes I am, but you have to start somewhere and I believe if I make it too complicated in this blog post you wont even try.

Feel free to e-mail George about his comic at George9448@aol.com and friend him on Facebook. If you are an artist who has never been published you may want to contact him about possible freelance work. I hear he has another project coming up. :-)

Turns out George is a social media maverick who uses his networking connections to work with artist all over the globe. It's a treat to watch him planning to put his publications together. Nothing like investing in yourself with a little help from a few international friends to create something interesting to share with others. I figure if they can do RX Tales and have fun putting it together then I should do my version of Real Estate ones.

Can you imagine my version of a Real Estate comic book? How about one with a pull out section with listings advertised smack dab in the middle of it? Comics do take advertising from sponsors, you know (LOL). I wonder who my first victims sponsors will be...Maybe we should make House Hag the editor in chief with Ralph the Real Estate Dog in charge of sales and distribution (LOL). ;-)

We will be continuing this conversation... Seriously. ;-)

CyberMinions.net The Illustrated Dictionary of Chaos

Laraine Shape Michelle Viggiano Carolyn Tann-Starr

Club Chaos Agents.com Outside Blog Minion Report

Chaos (derived from the Ancient Greek Χάος, Chaos) may be described as "a state lacking order or predictability." Wikipedia

First "Chaos Theory" Quote of the Day: "In mathematics, Chaos Theory describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems... systems whose states evolve with time, that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply CHAOS..." You can read the full Wikipedia article here.

Second "Chaos Theory" Quote of the Day: "Shit Happens..." Maggie the Dung Fly, Queen of Dipstick (LOL). The fun in creating an illustrated dictionary based on Chaos is you can actually teach something useful while fooling around with your very talented friends. My kids are very self-directed, self-determined little buggers who thrive in their chaotic environment so I love talking about them. I don't know if I believe the entire premise that "every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences," but I am certainly interested in finding out.

Did you read the definition of Determinism? Hmm... Very interesting... I may be able to spoof on that one for a long time - starting with Flystein (LOL). How many times have we each done some casual stuff to put us in smack dab in the middle of some serious shit as if we didn't see it coming, eh? I'm starting to really wonder about that bad little habit... Especially regarding the housing market. Remember the, "bubble? there is/ isn't a housing bubble," debate? ;-)

CyberMinions.net The Illustrated Dictionary of Chaos (Page 1)

TannStarr.com Briarwood, New York

CyberMinions.net The Illustrated Dictionary of Chaos

Laraine Shape Michelle Viggiano Carolyn Tann-Starr

Club Chaos Agents.com Outside Blog Minion Report

So here I am seated at my drafting table watching my seven year old typing frantically into Google. Every so often he would stop, look over his shoulder at me with an evil look, then furtively start typing again, alternating looking at the keyboard and screen. Now, you gotta admit that alone is enough to make this cheeky Mama want to go over there and check my shortie out but he's seven, speech delayed and obsessed with computers so I try not to interrupt his allotted time. The kid is a stickler about his routines. I do not want to ruin any fun for my son because discovering search engines gave him the incentive to memorize sight words, but that was an evil look. Hmm... wonder what he was thinking... I am very happy that the Internet is teaching my Autistic son how to type while he learns how to read but you have to watch your kids like a hawk when they are transversing the world wide web. Even the three year old gets jiggy with his cybertude sometimes.

Microsoft Office 2003 is one of Noah's favorite programs. He calls it "counting" because he first learned how to count by playing with me on the keyboards. I would pop huge numbers up and off the screen by typing in MS Word. Pretty soon he was kicking me to the curb and typing the numbers in himself.

Ever wonder how you sound to someone else? My son is a mimic who alternates between conducting class, then attending the class he is conducting (LOL). Sometimes his three year old brother is high-jacked as the student. Echolalic speech can be a hoot when your kid does both sides of the conversation at the same time. If you are bossy, your inflections and attitude will be mocked and emulated. You can learn a lot about your bad mouth habits when the wee ones start quoting you (LOL).

Since Stephen loves Noah, he tries to do what ever his big brother says. Sometimes with unexpected results... Yesterday we had to reset the modem. Our mistake? Doing it in front of the wee people. What was I thinking? Seriously? Every time I turn around I either lose power or lose the connection. Dude even started jacking around with the wide area network router because he suddenly realized those blinky, flickering lights were "pretty." The three year old is speech delayed as well (which may shock you with all the background noise he is able to generate while I'm on the phone), so you get a lot of really short sentences of four words or less. The few words he does knows, he knows them very well and wields them with great volume and spunky attitude.

Today was mad fun because I'm working from home. So far my morning consisted of enjoying watching Stephen wreck the place while giggling and yelling "mine," when he wasn't chasing me all about the apartment to inventory and count hot wheel cars. At some point he decided playing with my hair was going to be his fave exercise in self stimulation (LOL). When he realized I was working more than playing, that soon morphed into feeding the DVD peanut butter and jelly.

Had to time the shorty out. He starts acting cute and giggling all over the place, making eyes and planting kisses, really making nice, so I let him off the hook. I'm thinking baby is making nice and I'm busy so let him frolic because a happy toddler means I can play in the Rain. Big mistake. Dude is loading his food into my toilet. Now I'm doing the stern Mama routine and march hm off to the crib for another time out, shutting down the electronics while fussing, "No choo choo for you. Thomas the Train is all done. Don't feed food to the electronics and stay out of my toilet bowl."

He cries. We make up. He plays in my hair. He chases me around the apartment showing me his prized possessions while giggling and telling me quite proudly that everything is mine. All is right with the world because my sweetie is in Daffy Duck mode and that usually goes on for hours. Distracted, I give him some orange juice because he's my guy pie and that's what he wants... Hmm... What the hell was I thinking? Never give a marginally supervised three year old liquid if he's obsessing over sharing a meal with his favorite electronics. Seriously.

Remember that PB&J moment? I thought we were done with that... I guess I was wrong because while I was on a conference call Stephen the Minion Blur realized I was a wee bit distracted from watching a very cool presentation, so he got it into his tiny little mind to make a "ritual sacrifice" to my computer. What's a little orange juice between electronic friends when you're having fun, eh?

Oh my word... Dude almost disconnected my blogger's butt for the rest of the evening. However, I caught the little gigglemeister seconds before any major damage could be done to anything besides the rug. He looked so disappointed I almost choked trying to play it down and not howl with laughter. Friggin' kid broke the mute button weeks ago (LMAO).

Did I mention my kids are crazy? Life with wee people can be very interesting...

TannStarr.com Briarwood, New York

ActiveRain Cartoon Network Life With Wee People

CyberMinions.net The Illustrated Dictionary of Chaos Page 2