Insulators, and saplings, and pokemon, oh my!

Oh, hello blog. Nice to see you again.

Creative energy is still flowing chez Klavins, even if it has not been my own. The kids continue their prodigious efforts. I have some pictures to prove it!

First I need to provide a little back-story on D's latest area of interest. Last summer, when the boys (all 3) and I undertook to drive across the country before our month-long stint in Boston, D happened across some old electrical insulators in an antique store in Wyoming.

(What is an electrical insulator, you ask, if you are like me and not particularly electrically inclined?

An insulator is a glass or ceramic artifact that sits atop telegraph or electrical poles and separates and supports the wires. They come in a range of colors, shapes, and materials. Trust me, I think I know them all by now.)

Anyway, being in possession of a few dollars, D decides to pick them up. As it happens, they turned out to be the conversation piece of the trip. Have you any idea how many people out there know about insulators, their history and taxonomy? I do. I think I've met them all between Wyoming and the Atlantic ocean. D took them everywhere with him, and wherever we went, people would come up to him to talk shop about insulators. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in South Dakota. The owner? An avid insulator collector. We stop by a shop in Illinois. The owner insists on gifting D a box of insulators. We finally arrive in Massachusetts and take a weekend trip up to New Hampshire to see dear old friends. Of course, one of them turns out (surprise!) to collect insulators. E and I get so much mileage out of this. We tell D that back home in Seattle, he could strap that insulator to his forehead and walk around for a month, and no one would know it for what it was. We think, here in middle America, D has found his people.

Well, D has worked hard to keep the dream alive since his return. His insulator collecting continues apace. Long weekend hikes along deserted railroads have yielded a fair number of them; trips to antique stores with money in hand have too. A few weeks ago D disappeared into his workshop in the garage, complaining that he needed some good way to display his insulators. A few hours later, he was trudging up the stairs with this in his hand.

Yes, it is a model of an electrical pylon. He has displayed each insulator with information about it underneath, as a good collector should.

It's been fun to watch this curiosity about insulators broaden and shift. It has turned into a fascination with the history of the telegraph, and with railroads, because most old telegraph lines are found along railroad tracks. I love to watch him try to work through these areas of interest. This model pylon sits in his bedroom now alongside the other one. It is a work in progress:

The pylon is made of legos, but the telegraph line underneath is constructed of balsa wood, string, and small pebbles and bits of broken glass (which he has been collecting in the streets) that stand in for insulators.

In another corner of the room, he has begun work on a model railroad crossing using Wiki Stix to create crossing arms and semaphores. It is only a start and it turns out he took the semaphores to school with him today (which I'm sure his teacher loves!) so I will have to update with photos later when it's complete.

Hanna the cat approves.

When D is not working out his fascination with all things electrical and historical, he is hashing out his ideas for his new business with his friend M. Apparently they are determined to open their own tree nursery. Undaunted by the lack of open space to grow trees, he has come up with an innovative solution: Use the roof of your homemade fort for a plot!

Note the signage. A10K is his company name. Look for it in the future! :-)

Now, B's creativity runs along a more conventional track. B likes legos, but he likes to follow the kit instructions. He's an avid builder. Here's what he's done over the past month, since his birthday:

It's an entire Harry Potter city. He shows a degree of concentration while working through these kits that's not commensurate with his age (6). Several of these kits were designed for ages 14 and up.

When not building with legos or enjoying anything Harry Potter-related, B nurses an obsessive love for Pokemon cards. But collecting them is not satisfying his passion. He has been making his own, over the past week.

On the back of each card there is a message to his parents, who are apparently too quick to tidy up and often wind up discarding valuable pieces of art.

That's it for now. I have been toying with the idea of broadening the focus of this blog to be about creativity and family life generally, so I plan to be posting something else in the near future about ADULT creativity in this house, which too often gets neglected. How do you nurture your own creativity and manage work, home, and family? It's a balance I have not been able to achieve yet. Got any pointers? Feel free to stick 'em in the comments!