Learning to S-P-E-L-L

Posted on 03/24/2012 by chick

Dear Marshall,

We’re overdue for a post of random stories about you, so here goes.

  • One morning you started chattering about firewood. I don’t know what caused the sudden obsession, but now, every time we go outside, you insist on walking down to the stack of firewood and carrying a small log or two up to the house. We don’t need any firewood right now. We’re letting you stack the logs in front of the house purely for your own satisfaction. This obsession is cute but sort of frustrating, because we know that when you get older and we ask you to fetch firewood, you’re going to complain. You will, you know. It’s almost guaranteed.
  • You decided to climb onto the first level of the cat tree the other day. I suppose I ought to have told you to get down, but I thought it was funny. I said, “Marshall, are you a cat?” You started to meow and bat at one of the the dangling cat toys. I took pictures. Now you think it’s a ton of fun to climb on the cat tree. The cats are not pleased. It’s my fault for encouraging you, but I can’t quite manage to make myself feel bad about it. I think you’re the cutest cat ever.
  • At the end of the day we always rinse out your sippy cup. That way, if we neglect to wash it the next day, it will not be filled with curdling leftover beverage. You often make things difficult, though, by hiding the cup. As time goes on, I discover more and more of your hiding places. One is the lowest shelf on the back of the pantry door. Another is the cubby on the treadmill. But I haven’t found them all yet, and you recently hid one cup so well that it was missing for most of the week. When it was finally found, eeewwwwww! Thank goodness the straw had come loose inside so that there was no way you could have inadvertently drunk any of it. Neither your father nor I knows where you hid it or how it turned up on the counter days later. Oh, well. I suppose everyone needs to keep a few secrets. They give one an aura of mysteriousness.
  • I had heard that little boys could get themselves extremely dirty while playing outside, but I really had no idea. We’re talking white socks turned dark brown, mud-impacted fingernails, dirt rings around the neck, gritty scalp, black inside the nose, and sand down the pants. It’s a good thing you like baths so much, because we have to give you one almost every day.
  • We have a couple of Halloween-themed potholders. During the Halloween season I hung them on the cabinet handles. That was months ago, but you remember it and you think hanging potholders on cabinets is a fine idea. Every once in a while, you raid the potholder drawer and do this:
  • If I could have had a say in which genes you would inherit from your father and which ones you would inherit from me, I might have asked that you get your father’s hair. Sorry, but you got mine, and I apologize for its unruliness. Your mop is so thick that it’s practically impervious to water. You need a haircut badly, but with Easter coming up, your father wants to wait until just before the holiday so you’ll look your best for the family. Stupid me, I mentioned to your dad that you probably like getting your hair cut because you always get a lollipop afterward. Then I asked you if you liked lollipops. Oh, geez. After that, all day long, you pestered us. “Go car? Have haircut? Get lollipop?” Now I understand why so many parents resort to S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G certain words around their children. Add “haircut” and “lollipop” to our spelling list, ASAP!

Love,

Mom

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Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dentist?

Posted on 03/23/2012 by chick

Yesterday I went to the dentist’s office for a cleaning and checkup. This would not be in any way noteworthy had it not been my first dentist visit in 4 or 5 years. You see, when I moved to Rhode Island, I was nervous about picking a new dentist. Then I got pregnant and had a baby. Then I got pregnant again and had another baby. I used my pregnancies and the resulting busyness as an excuse for not going. And over the years I became more and more afraid of what problems a dentist visit might uncover. I became convinced that the dentist would first yell at me for waiting so long and then make one or more of the following pronouncements:

  • Your gums have receded so much that you need several rounds of extremely painful surgery.
  • Uh-oh. Someone needs a root canal. Wait, make that two. No, three!
  • You have such a bad case of gum disease that all your teeth must be removed immediately.
  • One of your teeth is infected and the infection has spread to your brain. You will probably die.

But amazingly none of those things happened. The hygienist said my gums are pink and healthy. The dentist said I need a couple of fillings replaced, but that’s just due to wear and tear, not negligence.

Huh. So no brain infection.

All that worry for nothing.

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That Poor Oyster Boy

Posted on 03/12/2012 by chick

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories by Tim Burton
Grade: B-

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories is composed of short rhymes and accompanying artwork. I asked for this book because the online description sounded interesting. And I received the book as a gift and I was happy to have it. But after finally reading it, I’m sorry to say that I don’t like it nearly as much as I’d hoped.

I think I was expecting something with a little more wit and a lot more text. It’s over 100 pages long but it takes less than 10 minutes to read! That’s because some pages contain no more than a line or two. It is, to some degree, a waste of paper. However, the layout is quite attractive.

Thematically the verses are all similar. Basically, they’re all about deformed or maimed or just plain peculiar children. Some of the verses suffer from uneven meter, and Burton’s method of rhyming often forces the stories into familiar and/or lame territory. For example, here is the start of the verse called “Staring Girl.”

I once knew a girl

who would just stand there and stare.

At anyone or anything,

she seemed not to care.

It’s slightly awkward. The phrase “She seemed not to care” is weak and it’s obviously only there for the purpose of making a perfect rhyme. It adds nothing to the story.

I’ll grant that several of the stories are cute. While “Staring Girl” is not the greatest verse, at least the artwork is funny, with the last picture acting as a punchline. But you don’t want to know about Oyster Boy (ugh!). And let’s not talk about “The Boy with Nails in His Eyes.”

While The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories is sometimes recommended for children, it is not appropriate for them. It’s gruesome and it mentions both sex and drug use. The subject matter doesn’t offend me, but it is problematic in another way. To put it simply, the book is a little too childish for the adult section of my library and a little too adult for the children’s section.

Because some of the artwork is so wonderfully Burton, and because in theme and tone it reminds me of Edward Gorey, it’s hard to give the book up. But it is, I think, the kind of book that belongs in the library of a devoted Burton fan. I will most likely give it away and hope that it ends up in the hands of someone who will love it for what it is without wanting more from it.

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Pass It On

Posted on 03/11/2012 by chick

Dear Marshall,

We read at least one book to you every night before bed. At some point you finagled a book before nap time, too. That means we have to read your favorite book to you at least twice per day. Your current favorite is Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go.

Your Auntie K gave this book to you. She said it was her brother’s favorite book growing up. When I first looked at it, I thought she must be nuts. It barely has a story. Mostly it is just colorful pictures of vehicles, some realistic (like ditch-diggers) and some completely imaginary (like five-seater pencil cars). And it’s a long book. So very, very long.

Since it has such a minimal storyline, we don’t read it per se. Rather we point to various pictures and talk about them. We look for the goldbug, recite the colors on the rainbow bus, count the flags at the gas station, talk about the broken car near the end of the story, etc.

And since it’s such a long book we don’t read the whole thing every time. We skip pages liberally. You usually accept that without complaint, but there are some sacred pages that must never be skipped.

The sacred pages are all near the end. First there is the mountain scene with the tantalizing glimpse of snow-covered watermelons in a truck. Next is the scene in which the watermelon truck has fallen over, and the watermelons are tumbling wildly down the road. This ultimately causes the multi-vehicle accident in the next scene (we say, “Bam!” and you say, “Make le mess!”). Then at the very end of the book, Officer Flossy finally catches that terrible driver, Dingo Dog, after his car breaks down. You like to comment on the broken steering wheel and the car’s tongue, which is sticking out from fatigue. We dutifully spend time on these important pages every single reading.

After hundreds of readings, I’m more than a little tired of this book, but I have to admit that the picture-inspired dialogue has increased your vocabulary. You recognize bulldozers, cranes, ambulances, and ferries, not to mention cheese cars. Two wonderful Martian terms to come out this twice-daily speech exercise are “tragic cones” (traffic cones) and “squasht-t-t-t” (squashed). And most importantly, you love the book.

So there must be some kind of magic at work in Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I don’t get it. Maybe you won’t get it when you’re older. But I hope you’ll remember it and pass the book on to another child someday, just as your Auntie passed it on to you, because magic is meant to be shared.

Love,

Mom

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Feet of Glass

Posted on 03/10/2012 by chick

The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

I usually don’t buy my fiction at Ocean State Job Lot, but I had the strangest feeling that there was a book there for me, so I paused to look at the titles. The Girl With Glass Feet had a pretty cover and the description sounded interesting. For only $3.99, there was no reason not to try it.

The Girl With Glass Feet is a strange book. I’m not sure what grade to give it. On one hand, it has a beautiful, dark, fairy-tale atmosphere. The setting is St. Hauda’s Land, a boggy archipelago rife with peculiar animals, including a species of winged cattle and an animal whose gaze turns other animals completely white. Ida, one of the main characters, has returned there in search of Henry Fuwa, the one person who might be able to explain why her feet are turning to glass.

While searching for Henry, Ida unexpectedly meets Midas, who is roaming around in the woods with his digital camera, looking for well-lit scenes to photograph. She asks him, “Are you sure you’re okay? Have you lost something?” Midas responds, “Light.” That answer is one of the things that makes this book interesting. It’s full of symbolism and metaphor. When Midas says he has lost his light, we’re meant to understand that he’s not just talking about the sunlight he needs for his pictures.

On the other hand, the book has many problems. Some scenes are awkward (for example, when Ida is a teenager she loses her dog, and the dialogue that occurs when Ida explains it to her parents is completely unbelievable). None of the weird things occurring in St. Hauda’s Land is ever explained (if turning to glass is as common a condition as is implied, how come nobody has every heard of the illness?). The romance between Ida and Midas is clunky. Midas is not particularly likable. The story doesn’t end happily (I don’t insist that a story end happily, but I do expect some small good to come out of the bad, or at least a small ray of hope).

So I go back and forth between B+ and A-. A B+ book is going to the Chopping Block and an A- book is going to stay here with me. Which will it be? For now, I’m going with A- (though I reserve the right to downgrade it). The reason for the A- is that I finished reading the book a few days ago and the story is still with me.

All in all The Girl with Glass Feet is an impressive first book from a young author. I will definitely be interested to read his second.

Final grade: A-

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Recent Reads

Posted on 03/04/2012 by chick

Granny’s Wonderful Chair by Frances Browne
Grade: A-

Surprisingly good set of fairy tales.

The Sea Egg by L.M. Boston
Grade: B

Clearly L.M. Boston hoped to instill a love of the sea in young folks, because she attempted to capture in prose all of the varied moods of the sea. I love the ocean, and I could go on and on about it myself, but I found Boston’s descriptions tedious after a while. There wasn’t much of a plot and the action was limited. Overall the book is cute but not worth the time unless you’re specifically looking for an seaside/triton story.

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Seek and You Shall Find

Posted on 03/03/2012 by chick

The weather has been variable this winter but never too warm or too cold to enjoy a walk in the woods. Here is a collection of pictures I took during my recent walks.

Remember how I told you last year about the tiny gardens? Here is another one.

Another Tiny Garden

It would never have occurred to me to plant a garden with just mosses and lichens, but it’s not a bad idea. The beauty of these plants (and their fungus symbionts) is that the cold doesn’t seem to bother them. They’re green year-round.

That is, unless someone or something comes along and tears them up.

Torn-Up Garden

Someone rode right over this tiny garden. It’s bad enough the damage we hikers do with our feet, but this kind of destruction is IMHO unforgivable. I continue to wish that the riders would stay out of the woods.

There’s not much chance of that, though. Someone has gone to a lot of effort recently to make the woods a fun place to ride.

Rider’s Ramp

I suppose I shouldn’t get on the riders’ cases too much, because Mother Nature has been far more destructive as of late. With Hurricane Irene, the October snowstorm, and some rather vicious windstorms, the trees have taken a beating.

Broken Tree

This break is just of one of thousands. I took a picture of this particular one because the broken part reminded me of a mouth.

It takes but a second for a tree to snap like that. Now look what Mother Nature can do when she has more time with which to work.

Decaying Tree

Not all of the trees are looking so bad, though. Some are still in great shape. The tree in the following picture has beautifully rugged bark.

Oak?

Looking more closely at this and other trees has made me realize how little I know about them. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been filling my spare time with self-taught classes. I will definitely have to include a botany class, so I can learn more about the local trees, not to mention the lichens and mosses.

Speaking of lichens and mosses, I have more pictures of them to share. The following picture was supposed to be a shot of lichen, but the real star turned out to be the leaf. Isn’t it gorgeous? The whole scene is reminiscent of a coral reef.

Lichen and Leaf

I found the perfect pompom of moss.

Moss Pompom

See the stick to the left of the moss? It has an interesting curve, which is part of what drew me to this scene. But it’s an unusually nice curve for a stick. It got me thinking about deer antlers. I looked online for information about cast-off antlers (known as “sheds”) and apparently they can be found in the woods during the spring. I will be actively looking for them during future walks.

And for deer. A couple of days ago it was snowing, so I temporarily abandoned my work (shhh! don’t tell!) to go for a walk in the snow. I saw a trio of white-tailed deer. They ran as soon as they got wind of me, and what a racket they made! BTW, while the name “white-tailed deer” may not be very imaginative, it certainly is accurate. Every time I spot one of them, it’s running away, so the only part I get to see is the tail, which is white all right, as white as the snow.

Walking in the snow was wonderful. Every scene was beautiful. The whiteness brought out the color of the stone-hugging lichens.

Lichen Green

The path that you can see in the distance leads to the area I call the Scenic Overlook, where I discovered something else white.

Bone

It’s a bone. What from, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about bones, unless we’re talking about the television series, Bones. It’s a good show, but it could make a hiker paranoid, wondering when they’re finally going to trip over that dead body that’s always in the woods.

And to think I ever said the woods behind the house were sort of boring. They’re full of interesting things (but no bodies, I hope!). The trick is that you have to look for interesting things.

Seek and you shall find.

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Pressure

Posted on 02/25/2012 by chick

Dear Kids,

I never realized how inappropriate most music is for kids, not until I had kids and wanted to give them music to which to listen. I’m surprised at how many of my favorites songs contain swears and references to subjects that are way over your toddler heads, so I’m in the process of making a list of the songs from my music collection that would be appropriate for you. For example, I think Bing Crosby’s “Swinging on a Star” and “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” would both be good. Not every song will be so old-fashioned (or so charming). I hope to put together a good mix of styles. And the list will grow as we go, not only because my collection is always increasing, but because you’re growing, too.

Of course, one of Marshall’s favorite songs right now is Billy Joel’s “Pressure,” and it is totally inappropriate for his age group. What it has going for it, though, is that it’s catchy and it has a one-word, oft-repeated hook. When that song is playing, we run around and around the piano and around the coffee table, and then into the dining room and around the dining-room table, and whenever Billy gets to the chorus, we shout “Preshah!” Running around like this is Marshall’s idea of dancing. And if I get tired and sit on the couch, he grabs my hand and says, “Mommy dance!” He’s so insistent. So I get up and dance around and around again. Livia likes to play, too. Her “Preshah!” sounds more like “DAH-da!,” but she gives it her all, and she giggles like mad as I chase her around the piano.

I have seen several blog posts recently about choosing music for children. The parents writing these posts are more concerned with the artistic value of the songs, and their kids are typically older than you, but the feeling of anxiety is the same. We parents all want to introduce our children to good music. And if our kids should grow up to like bad music, why, then we will be to blame, right? So we feel like we must choose carefully. Who would have thought that something as simple as a love of music could lead to so much…pressure!

I guess if I always used appropriateness as my only guide in picking music, I would never have played “Pressure” for you that first time, and we would have missed out on one of our best games. You kids can’t possibly understand the lyrics of the song right now, but you don’t need to get the lyrics to get the music. Understanding will come later. For now, we just need music, because music is fun. Thanks for reminding me.

I’ll keep making my list, simply because we still need a collection of songs for your iPod. I’ll avoid the songs with lyrics that are scary or offensive, but otherwise I’m not going to worry too much. I’m just going to give you the music that I love and hope that you love it, too. The pressure is off, and “Pressure” is on!

Love,

Mom

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Overall

Posted on 02/24/2012 by chick

I’m feeling pretty good right now, all things considered. I’m relaxing comfortably on the daybed in my office, with my heavy faux fur over my legs, listening to Coldplay, drinking a hot cup of tea. Both children are napping, so the house is quiet. My husband just got home. Soon he’ll come up here and make me laugh about something, I just know it.

Right now I have only a few worries, some minor and some not so minor. I am planning to make sopa de ajo tonight. Daisy Martinez, the author of the recipe, specifically warns against using canned chicken broth, but I’m going to go ahead and use it anyway. I hope the canned broth doesn’t ruin the soup, but this is a minor worry.

Then there is the major worry—the IRS audit. I can’t believe I’m being audited by the IRS! If we win the case, then everything continues along as it has been going. If we lose, the IRS penalizes us brutally and we’ll be hard-pressed to afford some upcoming expenses, like Marshall’s preschool, which wasn’t going to be easy to afford anyway. And it makes me so angry. We don’t make a lot of money. It’s hardly worth the government’s time to rake us over the coals. Year after year, certain wealthy people in this country play games with the tax code and get away with it. But we, who have ever striven to pay our share, might get stuck with a hefty fine for what was, if we were in fact wrong, an honest mistake. I believe we’re right. The IRS website says we’re right. But if we’re not, OMG, it’s going to hurt.

Now I have to wake the children, so I must end this post and turn off the Coldplay, drink my last sip of tea, take off the faux fur, and get out of bed. Ah, well. Nothing good lasts forever.

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Where I Am

Posted on 02/22/2012 by chick

I’m unhappy about the lack of posts so far this year. I ought to have written more, but other projects have been taking up my time and keeping me away. Marshall’s photo book is taking longer than expected. After creating a book about his first year and a half, I felt like I was done, but then I realized that I hadn’t covered the Dear Marshall posts for 2011. Oh, no! I have only a few goals that I want to accomplish this week while I’m on vacation. One of them is to finish the photo book. I hope I can! I work on it every day, but my progress is hampered by the fact that I already used most of the good pictures in other photo books. That means I have to find new ways to present them, or else why bother?

For the record, while the photo books may be taking up huge amounts of my time, they’re worth it. I printed Livia’s 2011 book and Marshall’s 1.5-year book. They are beautiful! I get misty-eyed looking at them, remembering happy moments, and thinking about how much fun we’re going to have as the kids continue to grow.

I’m also working on a more directed use of my spare time. I guess you could say that I’m taking project-oriented, self-taught classes. Right now I am studying the art of songwriting. I think that writing song lyrics is a lot like puzzle-making. First you choose a theme and a framework. Then you arrange theme-related words as artfully as possible within the chosen framework, and you get bonus points for cleverness. My other main goal for this week is to write a song. I am not even going to insist that it be a “real” song (i.e., not just a silly song to sing to the kids, but an actual song that a professional singer might wish to sing). My intent is simply to practice the form, so any subject will do.

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been around much. I’ll be back soon, though. I need to write some more Dear Marshall and Dear Livia posts to use in my next photo book project!

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