The other day, the Girl’s class had “Dress as Your Favorite Character” day.
There was only one option for L.
Results For "Month: November 2012"
Barbie Bike
It took her a while to save up the money, and in the meantime, she had to learn how to wait patiently.
And for a little girl who is obsessed with all things Barbie, the effort and time involved in opening the package was almost too much.
But in the end, she got it open, and then I began clipping this and that anti-theft string and band.
And we sat for a while pondering why they put the drive train on the left side, and why bikes generally have them on the right to begin with.
Morning Play
We’re almost in quarantine. With the Boy still a little iffy from a previous illness and K sick, we have stayed inside the whole weekend. Sometimes, though, that’s just what we need: a lazy Sunday morning with everyone doing what we want. L reads; the Boy plays; I hang out with my children.
As the morning wears on, I turn my attention to the Boy’s lunch: a soup made of pureed potatoes, carrots, squash, broccoli, and chicken. The Boy loves it, and I can see why: it’s really not that bad, despite the fact that it’s a bit bland due to the lack of seasoning.
The Girl helps with our lunch, which includes an eternal favorite for L: shrimp. This time, we set her to work cleaning them.
After lunch, a walk that reveals the irony of suburbia: nature and concrete.
With a short week in front of us, a relaxed Sunday is about perfect.
Sick
“‘I cannot go to school today,’ / Said little Peggy Ann McKay.” So begins one of the Girl’s favorite poems, the famous “Sick” by Shel Silverstein. Yet in our case, the sickness is real, and the truism shows itself to be more than mere cliche: When Mama is sick, everyone suffers. Mama is the glue that holds everything together, and when she’s down with the flu, the rest of us start coming apart.
And priorities shift, like this silly blog.
Lost
Dear Terrence,
I heard today: You’ve been tossed out of alternative school, with your latest offense being the proclamation to a teacher that she could just “– off.”
It’s time I took the gloves off, so to speak. That’s stupid. That’s simply stupid. Look back over your long, checkered school experience: when has something like that ever made a situation better? When has such behavior ever helped? When has such behavior ever brought about anything but more trouble from a teacher? When has a teacher ever replied along the lines of, “Oh my! I’m so sorry to have offended you. Please forgive me!”? When has such language ever helped get you out of trouble? When has that language ever done anything other than get you into more trouble?
I swear, sometimes I think you guys simply don’t think.
Annoyed and saddened,
Your Frustrated Friend in Room 302
Growth
WordPress’s automated permalink creator tells me that this is the fourth time I’ve titled a post “growth.” I suppose the real surprise is that, given the fact that we have two kids, I haven’t used that title more often. It’s a constant refrain in the house, among friends and family, even acquaintances.
“How she’s grown!”
“How he’s grown!”
Still, for K and me, that growth is gradual. Parents get used to seeing their children daily and the incremental changes disappear into the blur of everyday reality until we suddenly see something that shows, pointedly, how much a child has grown.
Like stumbling on an old picture.
At six months, he spills out of the chair he barely fit into at six days.
Generosity
The Girl has always been a bit nervous about spiders. For a while, she thought ever spider she saw was a Black Widow. Her choice of books at the Book Fair reveals how much she’s grown. Her decision to spend her own money to buy a copy for a friend shows it even more distinctly.
Failed Experiment
The Girl tried an experimental paper boat as she’d seen in Curious George.
Sadly, it didn’t work.
First Book Fair
There are few things, I think, as joyful for a lover of books to attend her first book fair at school.
Sunday Downtown
We never made it to Falls Park during our walk yesterday, so the family decided to start there today. I would have guessed, were someone to ask me, that we were too late to get much of an autumnal view, but I was happily mistaken.
This time, though, we took the whole family, including our one-and-a-half tooth Wonder Boy who seems willing to smile at just about anything.
The Boy’s smile probably had something to do with my wiggling fingers and silly face, but with colors like this, though, who could resist a smile?
As we headed into the main downtown area of the park, the sun came out fully and consistently, making the Peace Center glow. We, though, were less glowing, especially the Girl, who had by then adopted an all-too-familiar refrain: “I’m hungry.”
Nothing is quite as filling on a fall day as an ice cream cone,
and it never tastes as better than when outside. Or so someone told me.
