These Moments

It's Friday! It's time for This Moment, except that this week, I have a lot. Let's call it This Day, or These Moments. Have a great weekend. 

The Long Winter

'Mary' and 'Laura' Ingalls, 10/2009

The girls and I recently finished the 5^th book in the Little House series, The Long Winter. Well,

technically speaking, it is the 6^th, but since the protagonist of Farmer Boy (book 2) was, in fact, a boy, Bela and Mae had no interest in hearing me read it. I think this one really made an impression on them. Bela would demand I read 50 pages at a time, and some nights I would look up after our family reading session and realize almost two hours had passed since we started.

In case it has been 25+ years since you last entered the world of Laura Ingalls, let me refresh your memory. The inhabitants of De Smet, SD suffered an atrocious winter that pummeled them repeatedly with crippling blizzards. The snow was so deep, the storms so severe, that between early December and April of the following year, the fragile outpost lost all train service. The stores were not supplied, the food ran out, the families had no fuel, no light, no heat. The Ingalls survived on cod gravy and brown bread, the grain for which they had to grind morning noon and night in their minute coffee bean grinder.

Bread for breakfast. Bread for lunch. Bread for dinner. Such was their lot, as they were limited to the supplies they could scrape together from within their home.

Did you happen to read my post regarding our new budget? As it turned out, we were throwing away our money as fast as we were depositing it. Realistically speaking, it would have been more efficient if we had had our paychecks direct-deposited into the till of the cash registers at Whole Foods. We reduced our grocery budget by 30% during the month of March and, big surprise, we did not go hungry. We didn’t have as much luck during the month of April.

A weekend trip to Wisconsin that included steaks on the grill and special treats for the girls, combined with a delicious Easter dinner we hosted for friends and family, quite nearly destroyed our food budget. I’m not complaining. I wouldn’t change the steak, the ham, the lemon pound cake for the world. But now we find ourselves here, in the last week of April, having maxed out our limit. What to do?

We will not, as Chris suggested to the girls, eat Cat (Mae complained that Cat does not, in fact, taste very good.) We also will not, as I suggested, blow our budget even more. Instead, we are playing a game we have come to call “The Long Winter.”

Last night, the left-over ham hock and some dried beans became U.S. Senate Ham and Bean soup. This afternoon, the girls took cold mini pizzas to school for lunch. Tonight, we are having edamame, bacon, tortellini in chicken broth. Tomorrow?  A can of garbanzo beans and some shavings of dried parmesan cheese? A pound of easter eggs? A jar of hot sauce? A can of coconut milk with a side of red quinoa?

Or maybe just some coarse, brown bread. With cod gravy.

These Spring Days

Don't let our (relative) silence fool you. We've been busy, just not chatty.

We made some papier mache eggs...

Knitting lessons...

Now she's on a roll!

We colored eggs...

We hid and found...

Mae needs a little extra help

We finally finished The Long Winter

Happy April!

This Moment

A moment from our week I want to remember. Happy Friday, everyone!

Pygmalion

We've really been into audio books around here, lately. They are a wonderful thing to turn on post-breakfast while the girls are coloring, or to fill that lull before dinner. Our library has been growing, and our current favorites include Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox, Michael Bond's Paddington Bear series, Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamlin, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and last but not least Cynthia Rylant's retelling of 6 Greek myths in The Beautiful Stories of Life.  This last one, in particular, has been on a constant loop. Bela listens intently, day after day, to the stories of Pandora, Persephone, Orpheus, Pygmalion, Narcissus, and Psyche.

Now, we really limit our kids' TV time, but is filling their hours with audio books so very different from filling those same hours with Sponge Bob? I'd like to think it is. At least they aren't glued to their seats, mesmerized by the dancing flashing lights, completely indifferent to the world around them. At least there is still a little imagination required while listening. The aesthetics - the imagery - is not handed to them on a plate; they have to come up with it on their own. Additionally, they must listen. If I were to find an animated version of Paddington Bear and plop my kids down in front of our television, they could probably understand 95% of the story even if the set were muted. You understand a lot by watching.

So these are the things I tell myself as I click on the fourth audio file of the day and wonder if I should maybe just take them on a walk. The girls are on Spring Break this week. I am not. Funny how that works, isn't it? It's a cold and rainy day here in Chicago, with bouts of snow and gloominess falling from the sky. Yet as we entered our second listening session of The Beautiful Stories of Life, I wondered not how attentively Bela was listening, but rather how much she was truly understanding.

--"What's the name of this story, Bela?"
--"It's Pygmalion."
--"What is it about?"
--"There is a man who falls in love with his own creation. "
--"Oh. What's a creation?"
She just shrugged her shoulders in response.
--"It's something someone makes, Bela. Like your paintings. Those are your creations."

Bela looked confused. "But he doesn't fall in love with something he made, he falls in love with a woman. Only she has cold arms. She's real, but her arms are made of wood or something, and he asks the god to make her arms real and then he kisses her and his lips get hot."

Partly because I am a know-it-all, and party because I cannot help myself, I corrected her slightly flawed understanding of the story and told her that this woman was, in fact, carved out of ivory, and that Pygmalion was a sculptor who never had time for--nor interest in--love. Until he fell in love with his own creation.

It was delightful to peer inside her understanding of this classic tale. I wonder how she imagined this strange woman with wooden arms? At the very least, I know she's listening. She's trying to understand. She's mostly following the plots of these stories, which is more than I can say for myself. I'm about to watch the premiere of Game of Thrones on HBO for the third time. I assure you that if asked to summarize the plot in my own words, it would become obvious that my understanding of this Lord-of-the-Rings-like tale is not nearly as complete as Bela's grasp of ancient Greek mythology.

This Moment

A moment from my week I want to remember. No words (ok, a lot of words) necessary. Happy Friday!

Secretive

Bela is completely incapable of keeping a secret. She's a lot like me - not only does she like to be the keeper of information, she likes to be the one who doles it out. You know, the know it all. This manifests itself in all sorts of fun ways.

For instance... I can no longer allow Bela special treats that are just between Mommy and her. No extra tv viewing during the week, no candy, no new books, no letting her help me make cookies when Mae isn't around. Absolutely no extra anything that I wouldn't want anyone to know about. The minute she sees someone, she will involuntarily spill the beans.

"Mmmmm, I love chocolate cupcakes. Do you love chocolate cupcakes, Mae? Do you? Don't you wish you....MOMMY GAVE ME A CHOCOLATE CUPCAKE AND I ATE IT AND YOU DON'T GET ONE."

Sometimes, in the morning, Bela will greet me and immediately confess to some embarrassing mishap: Good morning, Mom. I pooped a little in my pants and I hid my underwear under the radiator."

Sometimes it's just downright ridiculous. Out of nowhere she'll mutter completely under her breath and all non-sequitur like "mom let me watch a movie, Mae,  you didn't know it you weren't here i watched milo and otis i watched milo and otis you weren't supposed to know..." and it trails off.

And, unfortunately, Bela also likes to dish out the details of our personal lives to fellow parents:
"My daddy sleeps in just his underwear. My mommy goes to the couch when my daddy snores. Last week my mommy said you were a privileged spoiled brat of a woman."

Mae is the opposite. I could buy her her own pink convertible and she would go to her grave with that. She's not about throwing it in Bela's face. She doesn't care if anyone else knows. She realizes that in knowledge there is power, especially the kind of knowledge that she has and no one else does.

I went out for a run a few weeks ago and I was probably gone 45 minutes. Chris was in charge. I came home and Chris was engrossed in a book, Bela was coloring, and Mae...well, she was conspicuously absent. Where was she? How long had she been gone? What was she doing? Why didn't she say anything to anyone?

Do you know where we found her? In the deepest, darkest, scariest corner of our unfinished basement, between the room where the homeless squatter keeps the dead bodies and where my husband keeps his 10 fish tanks. How long had she been gone? Judging by the amount she had consumed, about 44.5 minutes. What was she doing? Eating all the pink and red hard candies from an unopened secret package Mommy had put in the jewelry box on top of her dresser, out of the way of children's hands. Why didn't she say anything to anyone? Because she is not like Bela.

I guess in a way she gets it from her Dad. Not that he's totally secretive, but he is definitely a lot more tight-lipped than the other adult in this house. Me? Right now I'm just trying to keep from confessing that, after my husband loads the dishwasher, I secretly get in there and reorganize everything he's put in, to make more efficient use of the space.

And that when I sat down to write this blog I had absolutely no idea what I would say.

See? I just can't help myself.

This Moment

A moment from our week; an early morning scene I want to remember. Happy Friday, all!

Reading

When we enrolled the girls in Waldorf school we did so fully aware that this meant that they would not be participating in "traditional" preschool academics. There would be no specific drills aimed at developing their early reading skills, there would be no overtly academic lessons on the alphabet, spelling, and the such. Just stories. Lots and lots of stories, songs, rhymes, and puppet shows.

We didn't enroll them in their school in spite of this; we sent them there precisely because of this. At least, this was one of the reasons we decided to do so.  Research aside, it felt right to us. Preschool and kindergarten lay the foundation for literacy later in life, and we shouldn't feel so rushed to push our children to read.

Oh, I do love Jane M. Healy's book Endangered Minds - Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do About It.  In an entire section devoted to the evils of Sesame Street (it's hard for me to write this without a little smile) she claims that it is inappropriate for us to believe that preschoolers should learn to read. She goes on to say that it is actually an injustice to push reading skills at our kids "before they have completed certain developmental tasks that will give them something to read about - and the ability to understand it when they do!"

Misguided efforts to train preschoolers in skills more appropriate for kindergarten or first grade diverts valuable time and attention from their real learning needs. To become good readers children first need help in installing the cognitive and language furnishings that will make the brain a comfortable place for real literacy to dwell! (p222, all exclamations hers!) 

And I believe this. Waldorf kids don't start reading until they are almost 7 years old. And that's cool. Right? I mean, it doesn't matter that I have friends whose four-year-olds participate in the Chicago Public Library summer reading program. And they're actually, you know, reading. It doesn't matter that I was, as the story goes, reading by age 4. Does it? DOES IT?

Oh parents are a complicated species, are we not? I knew it was right to wait. I could see that Bela was developing literacy skills like crazy, even without formal reading education. That kid has a love for story unrivaled by anyone else's I know. Just last night we read over 50 pages out loud in The Long Winter, and she was begging to still hear more about Mary, Laura, Pa, Ma, Carrie and Grace. But still, I cannot lie. I was a little bit, (ok, maybe a lot) self conscious about her lack of reading.


Which leads me to my post for tonight. Bela is reading. She's really reading, so I can finally stop secretly sweating the fact that my 6 year old didn't know who Dick and Jane were. I can finally shelve old Jane Healy's book and stop quoting her endlessly to my friends - you know, the ones who have little kids who read.

I was reading along, entering our second hour of story time last night, and she just started saying words she could read on the page. I handed the book over to her and she read a paragraph, with seriously minimal help from me. It went like this:

But every note from the fiddle was a very little wrong. Pa's fingers were clumsy. The music dragged and the fiddle string snapped. (From The Long Winter.) 

And it went on and on. And when we finished with The Long Winter she grabbed one of her early reader books that had been collecting dust on her bookshelf and she read that too.

We bounced up and down on the bed.  Bela, Mae and I chanted "Bela can read! Bela can read! Bela can read!" over and over, certainly to the annoyance of my downstairs neighbor. I grabbed her by the shoulders and told her she would never, ever be bored again. I said something cheesy like "you can get lost in a million worlds now that you can read, you'll never wonder what to do with your free time again."

And Mae? Well I guess until she learns to read, she can always, you know, create art.

Addendum

In all my excitement to relay my Summer Camp story, I failed to inform you all that we did indeed get in. Mae will be returning to her MWF play camp that lasts from 9-1, and Bela has joined the ranks of the big kids in the M-F camp from 9-3.

Of course, the only way she would agree to do this was if I promised to only send her three of the five days each week. We all know that she can't possibly let Mae stay home alone on Tuesdays and Thursdays with her Mama. And honestly, that works just fine for me. It's hard to pick berries in Michigan, picnic at the dunes, swim in the lake, go to the beach, eat ice cream, and fly a kite if you're always at camp.

Summer Camp

It's that time of year again, the time for a little healthy, cut-throat, parental competition. This morning, the giant digital clock that has graced the splash page of the Chicago Park District's Summer Camp Program Website for the last 10,080 minutes counted down its last seconds.

I got up at 5:00 am. Ok fine, my alarm got up at 5, I rolled out of bed 45 minutes later. Aside from finishing up a few remaining Spanish compositions I had been meaning to grade, my focus was wholly dedicated to Kilbourn Park. You see, every April, the city of Chicago posts its list of upcoming Summer Camp programs. What does summer camp mean to the average family? It's a space where children can engage in a little healthy competition, practice their athletic coordination, learn the importance of group work. It's a place where they can make beautiful art projects out of discarded bottle caps and patriotically themed rubber coated wire. But mostly, it's a place to send your kids for less than $50 a week, for 6 glorious weeks.

I don't have my numbers straight, but by my estimate there were about 4 Summer Camp Programs that were feasible for my family, based on location, age range, and hours. Each of these 4 programs had anywhere from 20-50 spaces available for online registration. Does that sound like a lot?  The population of the city proper tops out at somewhere around 2,700,000. I have no idea how many of those are children, but this morning it felt like I was competing against them all.

After kicking the girls out of the car in front of their school at 8:30 am, I raced off to the 28-story block of cement that is my office building, got off at the 16th floor, burst into my drab office, tossed my bag on the extra chair and sat down at the computer with my morning's fourth cup of coffee. My phone was buzzing with frantic summer-camp texts from fellow mom-friends, and from Chris - who I had left at home in front of his computer, with his fourth cup of coffee.

We all sat in front of our separate computers, hearts racing, laughing in spite of ourselves. When was the last time my heart beat so wildly? My pulse raced so frantically?  I warmed my fingers up on the keyboard, practicing my moves: tap, tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. The clock counted down. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. I was in charge of registering Bela. Chris was in charge of registering Mae. Tick tock, tap tap. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

I don't think I will ever be able to fully convey the stress this causes me every April. Yes, I want Bela to learn how to play soccer. Sure, I love that there is an organic greenhouse on the grounds and they get to dig and plant. Of course the camaraderie, the fresh air, the media-free experience are something they'll probably never forget. But seriously, it's all about me. What on earth would I do with them if I alone were in charge of their entertainment for 10, 080 minutes every week, all summer long?

This Moment

My weekly post - A moment captured, a moment I want to remember. No words necessary. Happy Friday!