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Literary Debut
As we wrack our brains here in the Clueless household to come up with interesting summer projects to keep the little genius busy, I have to admit that “writing a book” was entirely her idea. I think it is a pleasant, avant garde, impressionistic first offering that surely heralds a stellar future literary career.
This is So Exciting!
So….the little genius is turning five this week. I’ll dispense with the sentimental glurge (that was so 2009), other than to say it still makes me a little teary to think about how fast she is hurtling through her early childhood, and her world is expanding in leaps and bounds every day. But that is good right?! exciting even? Yeah, I’ll go with Exciting for $500, Pat, thanks. More about that in a minute.
Lately my thoughts are turning more seriously towards the kind of experiences, values, and big-picture understandings that I hope she will gain in the coming years, and less toward “don’t drink that or you’ll grow a second head” or “here, let me make all your fashion choices for you”. It is a different kind of challenge; one which sometimes raises up ugly feelings of inadequacy and unpreparedness in me. Who am I (irreverent, pretend-adult that I am), to be (partially) responsible for the healthy development of such a bright and wonderful child anyway?
So yeah, she has always had a strong and sharply defined personality, but lately her maturity and independence are really, ahem, shining through. But again, I perceive this as positive, even though it challenges me to really think about my parenting and that which I hold dear enough to try to “instill”, mother-to-daughter. I don’t really like that word, “instill”, anyway, because for gods’ sake, I can’t just hook up a tube to her ear and pour in my beliefs and values (icky visual, huh?). Some days I think I have a pretty good handle on these concepts and then others, I feel pretty lost. Fortunately she is (relatively) patient with me. And of course, I acknowledge that my influence is only a piece of her overall tapestry, but it is the piece that I am responsible for and thus where I devote a good deal of thought processes lately. Please, karmic forces, just don’t let me screw her up too badly.
OK – all that junk aside, on to the exciting stuff!
My kid is LEARNING TO READ!!!
(Background information: I am a reading HOUND. I obsessively devour books of all kinds. I love, love, LOVE the tactile smell, feel, and design of books. I love the act of selecting something to read and sliding into a world wholly apart from my own reality. I have great patience for books…even for diffuse storylines, impenetrable classic literature, shallow or poorly developed stories, grittiness, explicitness…I want to experience it all. I want to be the crazy aunt from the movie Inkheart with a magnificent library, and a cozy windowseat. FF is also a voracious reader, although more particular about his genre preferences. Collectively, we have been reading to this kid since before she was born. She got her own public library card about a year ago and she uses it frequently.)
So the fact that she is learning to read is a really big, exciting event. I love thinking of all the literary adventures before her, and hope we can share this as a common passion. She is doing so well at school and home; learning to sound words out phonetically as well as identify an impressive handful of words by sight now.
The other night I unpacked a box of my old books that Gmom had in storage, and I discovered a couple of my all-time favorites. One of them was my beloved, battered 1950s-era copy of The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. For most of my life, I re-read this book on an annual basis because it is quite frankly, one of the most charming stories ever written. The various movie adaptations are cute and all, but they can’t begin to compare to the brilliance of this book. So I figured this would be a great opportunity to share a “big girl chapter book” with K, and last week we started reading a chapter per night. So far she seems to enjoy it and comprehend more than I expected. She gets a bit fidgety when there are long passages that are difficult for her to understand, but then we take a break and talk about the story. This is a monumentally exciting and happy experience for me!
Another expanding horizon….when K and I were shopping at Lowe’s the other day, she spied a nutcracker and asked me about it. And being K, a simple explanation wasn’t enough so I told her as much as I could in an understandable five-year-old fashion. Later in the day, I got a wild hair to check the on-demand TV listings to see if there were any classical Nutcracker ballet productions available…and score! I found a charming Bolshoi Theatre production, which we began watching last night after dinner. She was surprisingly engaged in it, once I began to tell her about the story and interpreting the related dances. Her attention span has always been pretty impressive, but I still didn’t expect a classical ballet production to keep her that entertained! She was actually mad at me because we had to stop watching about 3/4 of the way through to get ready for bed. Even though I promised her we could finish watching it the next day, she was royally annoyed with me. It just tickles me silly that she is so patient and open to new experiences like that.
…now if we can just get her to be a little more open to eating a wider variety of proteins and delicious fruits and veggies!
Miscellanea
Miscellanea: from answers.com, “pl.n. Miscellaneous items or written works collected together.”
Well, if that doesn’t sum up a blog, I don’t know what does. But in a more limited scope, this post is another one of those “random and unfocused” shotgun approaches. Let’s get it on!
Update 08/04, afternoonish: I really started this post almost a week ago but it landed in the half-finished draft chill chest for a while, so forgive any dissonant time references.
Cute Stuff:
Introducing the "Where's Waldo?" hound, AKA Tessa the Squiggly
♦ Last night, while desperately trying to finish watching the latest DVR’d episode of Chopped (I love you, Ted Allen!), my dear daughter asked to have a tea party. And I was pretty willing to buy her off with just about anything as long as it posed no imminent bodily threat, so I agreed to her tea party if she’d JUST SHUT UP ALREADY AND LET ME SEE THE LAST 10 MINUTES go find something quiet to play with for a few minutes. So she gave us a brief respite and let us finish watching one of the weirdest Chopped dessert battles ever. Anyway, I then prepared a teapot of iced tea (hoping to prevent any random scalding of important body parts) and cut up a couple of snickerdoodles to stand in for scones. K then played the perfect hostess to us, her captive guests, as she poured the tea from a real china teapot into a random assortment of plastic play tea-ware (I got the sugar bowl and FF got the cream pitcher!) and distributed “scones”. She even improvised a fake British accent. Cutest tea party EVER. As I sipped my cold tea and absorbed the party ambiance, I was reminded of how obsessed I was with this very same activity when I was her age. Usually my dad was the unwitting victim…errr…guest and it was loads of fun (for me). Too bad he didn’t have DVR technology!
♦ Lately during pretend play, K has developed a habit of providing “instant replays” and I find it to be HYSTERICAL. She will randomly run up to me, hold her hand up flat and tell me to LOOK AT THE SCREEN and watch the video of whatever recent feat / trick / crash / action hero sequence she just completed. Sometimes she even critiques herself! She’s a virtual one-girl Olympic production!
♦ We recently opened some long-stored boxes of my childhood favorite stuffed animals. K has gone NUTS for them and keeps raiding the boxes for more friends to play with, while in the meantime her poor mother tries to figure out a more permanent critter housing solution. I love watching her find so much joy in my treasures, but I sometimes get little twinges of pseudo-jealousy…those are MY critters!
♦ Last week, I had to make a solo overnight trip to Gmom’s to deliver a tire (long boring story), and when I called K to tell her goodnight, she told me to “be sure to call her if I got lonely at night and she would sing me a lullaby and make me feel better”. AWWWW!
Scary/frustrating/unpleasant/overwhelming stuff:
♦ Holy crap, fall is almost here! Not only will my summer reprieve from graduate school be over [pathetically crying on the inside at the prospect], but it also represents a big rush at work for the first couple months of the semester. Time to lace up the proverbial running shoes and stock up on therapeutic adult beverages. And of course, we are glad K will be back to school twice a week and have the extra engagement, but we are definitely not looking forward to all the cross-town transportation again. Ugh. I have extremely low tolerance for wading through traffic.
My beautiful baby bird, Leilani
♦ Dear god, we got invaded last weekend. Gmom gleefully delivered a large quantity of furniture, pets, books and other misc. personal stuff that had been put into storage when I graduated from college. (OK, the pets weren’t really “in storage” but anyhoo…) Somehow I should have known all that stuff was going to come back to haunt me, but I’m pretty good at focused denial. Oh well. The furniture is an assortment of inherited goodies and I am grateful for all the upgrades, but still overwhelmed. Gmom is currently trying to streamline her household and claims that since I now have a house, I must reclaim my “abandoned” pets. For the record, they weren’t abandoned…I simply moved out of the house…I mean, that is the job of younger siblings, right, to take up the torch as their elders move out? Humbug. So our little clueless family has been increased by 1 female eclectus parrot, and 1 female squiggly italian (miniature) greyhound. Holy crap. I’m pretty sure that the cats want to kill us. Cookie, so far, has retaliated by going into heat and yowling her furry little head off 24 hours a day. [sob.]
♦ This is a continuation of the last point, but my soul hurts at the thought of receiving a bunch more boxes of stuff that I have no idea what to do with, when I still have a good handful of unpacked boxes from moving into the house *cough* a year ago this week *cough*. This is partly my fault, due to summer apathy and generally feeling overwhelmed. Yes, I realize it is silly to hang on to stuff that has been in boxes for a year untouched and unmissed. But especially when it comes to my books (I have a dream that one day I’ll have a cozy library FILLED with all my favorite books), just because I don’t read them yearly doesn’t mean I want to part with them.
♦ K has taken to accusing me of being an “awful mother” and threatening to “not be a part of the family” any more whenever she gets upset / insulted / frustrated / bored / angry. Why is everything always my fault? Why do I still feel guilty at times, even when I clearly have no logical reason to? Why does she scream and holler whenever I wash her hair, but she cooperates without a peep if her father does it? Give me a break, kid. Please? Really, PLEASE?
Back again!
We’ve got to stop meeting like this…people are going to start wondering! Holy month-plus blogging hiatus! Ideally, I’d begin this post explaining how refreshed and relaxed I am, but meh, it wouldn’t exactly be the truth, so what the hell – I won’t waste your time.
Yes, we captured this 2 foot tall penguin in Las Vegas, NV.
Anyhoo, after my last confessional missive, I began a fabulous! sensational! post entitled “Essay on Marriage” to commemorate my upcoming 7th anniversary, but the writing proved more complex than I originally anticipated (how deliciously ironic!). So I had to put it on ice while we went on a whirlwind 2-week vacation. I’m sure I’ll be thawing it out of the draft locker soon.
Bowling with kids... a little frightening
Said vacation was a nice, if not entirely original, break. First, we did a 5 day stint in Vegas…after all, it is tradition on our anniversary. We ate some good food, drank some good stuff, did a little shopping, caught a couple movies (I really liked Karate Kid!), bummed around the pool, and generally had a good time. This time we did try something new though…we took K bowling, and it was surprisingly more fun than I expected. I’m sure it’ll become a regular Vegas agenda item now that she knows how much fun it is, and that there is a 24-hour bowling alley inside the hotel/casino where we usually stay.
From Vegas, we then spent a night in Kingman at the fairy-dust Hampton Inn, luxuriating in their ultra-comfortable environment. And the next day…a good ol’ Route 66 adventure! We ambled along to Peach Springs and did the Grand Canyon Caverns tour, which was very interesting, but not something I will probably feel compelled to repeat. I’m not really claustrophobic about caves…but there is still something just a little overwhelming about being in a rocky void 200 feet underground. After a post-caving dinner stop in wacky Seligman, we were on our way into lovely northern AZ to spend a few days with Gmom and Uncle Bubba, including a delightful July 4th steak-and-s’mores experience.
Enjoying the cool northern AZ weather with no hands!
Going against the norm, I actually took a wee break from my various electronic leashes this time too, although I did not maintain complete abstinence. I left my work phone at home, and only briefly glanced at work email ONE TIME in that 2-week period. It was rather blissful to leave it all behind for a while. I did bring my netbook of course, but barely used it, except to slip in a couple of episodes of LOST here and there.
After returning home, we faced a marathon of mundane unpacking, laundry, and pre-surgery appointments for FF. The hell season is in full swing, with temps running in the 110-115° range most days. I am so cringing in advance for our August electricity bill. The heat and residual vacation lethargy kept me from bothering with anything that remotely required intellectual focus (ie blogging, responding to email, paying bills etc) and so all my spare moments have been filled with an odd assortment of summer shows on DVR, and reading a few books FF picked up for me at the library. This summer has had a distinctly supernatural flavor, with lots of vampires, pixies, demons and the like. I breezed through Terry Goodkind’s “Law of Nines” on vacation because I have been pining for a new Richard/Kahlan book, but unfortunately this book fell quite flat in my opinion…very one-dimensional and forgettable compared to his other works. Sigh.
My little cowgirl!
Anyway, FF survived his wee eye surgery last week to straighten out his lazy eye. He apparently had a significant amount of scar tissue from prior childhood surgeries, and so he came out of surgery looking drastically, demonically bloodshot. At 2 weeks post-surgery, the redness is just now starting to clear a bit, poor guy. But in true FF fashion, he is quite stoic and takes it all in stride. He is looking forward to improved depth perception and peripheral vision once his brain sorts out the new visual field. I am looking forward to him being ready to drive again, because while I dearly love my daughter, I am getting tired of being the sole parent on transportation detail. Yeah, I know that sounds pretty self-centered and all, but… Kids are so lovable, but SO horrifying, too. Anyone who says otherwise is on much stronger drugs than I am.
And with that poignant thought, I will wrap this up, with other updates to follow soon. Ciao!
What a little monster!
Scholastic book order club
Emblem of happiness!
My love of reading and books started early. I have distinct memories of being frustrated and upset over not being able to read the magazines and books hanging out in our family bathroom, prior to starting kindergarten (yes, true confession, I am a bathroom reader to this day).
When I was in elementary school, and started to get the scholastic book club fliers periodically, it was incredibly exciting to pore over those wonderfully color-rich, newsprint papers. And the excitement of getting to order a book every now and then, and the anticipation of waiting for it to arrive, are some of my brightest, happiest school memories. On the days when those crisp, cellophane wrapped packets arrived, it was like Christmas! I absolutely LOVED the whole process*.
So last month when I picked up K from preschool and found a packet of Scholastic Book Club fliers in her cubby, I was over the moon with happy memories and the excitement of propagating my weird book ordering fascination on my child! I’m serious–I was totally, ridiculously thrilled about getting those fliers and I told all captive family and friends about it, too.
I spent well over two hours carefully selecting books for K. With the addition of speedy online ordering, those crisp cellophane wrapped books arrived faster than ever! And good timing too, because with K’s voracious story appetite, we were getting to terminal overload level with all her other books.
Oh happy day!
*(all part and partial of being a super nerd/geek)
