You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2008.
President’s Day was a while ago, but here’s what we did to celebrate:
In order to keep up with Jeffrey’s ongoing interest with George Washington, we went to Valley Forge. The park holds a birthday party for George every year, complete with historic reenactors, a capella singers, and a cake made from Martha Washington’s recipe. (Which I obtained a copy of, and which starts with 40 eggs and 5 pounds of butter and moves on from there. People must have had high demands of cake in Ye Dayes of Yore.)
The best part, however, is that Jeffrey and the other children there were all able to join the Continental Army for the afternoon. This activity is done at Valley Forge on the 1st Saturday of every month, and it appeared to be done in conjunction with the local Boy Scouting organization. Kids were divided into groups by age, and given toy muskets to do drills with.
Batallion leaders in period uniform taught the kids to march and shoulder their firelocks in the right way. They were accompanied by a long tail of picture-snapping parents.
When they reached the parade grounds, everybody “loaded” their muskets, attatched the “bayonets,” and then pointed them at an invisible enemy while screaming. HUZZAH!
Kids were told up front that if they pointed their gun at another person, or poked or hit someone, it would be taken away. Jeffrey took this very seriously.
After drilling, General Washington did an inspection of the troops . . .
Deliciously in character, he kept making comments like “I must speak with the quartermaster about the irregularities in uniform here” and “I’m a bit dismayed with the age of these new recruits.”
Kids who participate in this activity for 3 months get promoted to sergeant, and General Washington promotes them, and gives a little speech, and talks about “writing to Congress to ensure the proper payment of $12 per annum” or some such. And keep in mind that he wasn’t just George — he was George in 1777. The man was probably a little too into his job; later I saw him pigeonholing people and giving long talks about threshing methods at Mount Vernon.
On this trip, be read:
George Washington’s Teeth by Deborah Chandra, illus. Brock Cole. Probably the most accessible book about Washington for preschoolers. A series of rhymed verses recount the loss, one by one, of Washington’s teeth during the major events of his life. Brock Cole’s detailed comic illustrations are gorgeous as usual. Oh, and get this: he apparently never wore wooden teeth.
I finally got a new pair of glasses this week!
(Applause, applause!)
The old pair were being held together with masking tape and wire. The new pair came in a red case from Target Optical, and as soon as I received it I whipped out the new glasses, stuffed the old ones in the case, and completely forgot about it.
That is, until Jeffrey discovered the old glasses in the case and immediately became curious.
Well . . . curious is Jeffrey’s default mode. Let’s just say that he became even more curious.
“What are these, Mommy?” he asks.
I explained, pointing out the temple piece wrapped in masking tape.
“So these are the old glasses?” asks Jeffrey.
“Yes. I don’t need them anymore, so I put them in that case.” Jeffrey’s eyes widen.
“Is this case the glasses’ tomb?”
I suppose I ought to explain that Jeffrey has had a recent obsession with all things Egyptian.
“Yeah, I guess you could pretend that that case is a tomb for glasses,” I say.
“We need to put this tomb in the temple,” he says reverently, holding the case up on his palms. “It should be surrounded with the mummy things.”
“If you want,” I say. (It was really, really hard to keep a straight face for this. I think I deserve a medal.)
Brian overhears all this. “Are you going to put it in a pyramid, or the Valley of the Kings?” he asks Jeffrey.
“It shall go in the Valley of the Sunglasses,” says Jeffrey, his face solemn. “I’ve built one out of Legos in my room.” With that, he — with the glasses still upraised on his hands — marches slowly down the hall and ceremoniously entombs them in a little Lego structure he built a few days ago.
Although, truth be told, last week I was informed that this Lego structure was supposed to be a starport for spaceships, but who’s counting? The Valley of the Sunglasses it is now, and no matter what Jeffrey says in the future, that’s how I’ll always think of his little Lego structures.
For further reading:
The Egypt Game by Zylpha Keatley Snyder. There are few books that manage to accurately depict children’s fantasy play — especially the fantasy play of older elementary school-age kids — as well as this one. Perfect for Egypt nuts, kids with a taste for backyard adventure, and anyone else who’d like to see How Children’s Books Ought To Be Done.
We spent a good part of the week constructing lacey construction papery thingies to mail off to grandmas, be handed over to classmates (which usually results in their immediate destruction) or taped on our dining room wall until St. Patrick’s Day or Easter, whichever holiday compels me to re-decorate first.
But check this out:
This is a valentine that Eleanor made. Brian and I had been spending a lot of time coaxing Jeffrey to scrawl a “J” on each of his valentines, and in the middle of this, Eleanor decided on her own that she would like to write an “E” on her valentines. See those shaky blue laddery things? That’s the letter E. I’m so proud of her!
The best part is that Eleanor narrated her E-construction, in a perfect imitation of the way I try to teach Jeffrey to make his letters:
“You make a big long one, then one part of a letter E, then another bottom part of a letter E, then another part of the letter E, then another part of the letter E, then another. . . “
This thing might be on the dining room wall until June. Oh, how I loves it so.
. . . when my neighborhood Grocery Store That Always Plays ’70s Music suddenly becomes the Grocery Store That Always Plays ’80s Music? Am I getting old? Have I been here too long?
In 2018, will the store suddenly begin playing M.C. Hammer and Enya?
(Shudder.)
They’ve been learning about Chinese New Year in preschool this week. How did I know? Did the kids wear red? Did they make a paper-mache dragon? Did they get little envelopes of goodies?
No.
I wouldn’t even have known that they were doing a C.N.Y. unit at school if it weren’t for Jeffrey’s ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of our dinnertime rules as far as they can go.
It’s difficult to teach table manners to any kid, but Jeffrey can be more of a trial than most. He gets up between bites, always wants to dump food in his glass, and frequently gets absent-minded and begins eating with his fingers — until the Great Scolding begins. (I long wistfully for the day when dinnertime looks like dinner, not a training montage from No Time for Sergeants.)
Anyway, this past Friday was a little more hectic than usual. Jeffrey kept forgetting to eat dinner with his fork, and I finally threatened to take his food away if he forgot again, when he suddenly stood up and held his arms up in the air.
“I know!” he shouted. “I can eat the way they do in Chinese!” He then scampered off to the kitchen and began rummaging around in the silverware drawer.
The “Chinese way”? After a few moments, we got it.
“Jeffrey,” I called out wearily. “We don’t have any chopsticks.” He didn’t hear me, but reemerged with a new fork and knife in each hand. Climbing back into his seat, he then proceeded to use his fork and knife as if they were chopsticks — not that he held them both in one hand to pinch up food, but the way your average American five-year-old might eat with chopsticks: one in each fist, holding them at the tops of the handles, picking up food like the metal crane in a carnival prize-machine.
Ah, multicultural education: is there anything it can’t influence?
Anyhow, this is my new favorite “Chinese New Year” book (although it doesn’t have much to do with the holiday):
Dragon Dancing by Carole Lex Schaefer, illus. by Pierr Morgan. A class of preschool kids learn about dragons in class, and then decide to make a dragon in art class for classmate Mei Lin’s birthday. Morgan’s Asian-inspired illustrations sparkle with clean lines, gorgeous colors, and pretty details, but what really shines here is Schaefer’s alliterative text, which includes very true-to-life kidspeak: Dragons have “boink-boink eyes” and a “ricky-rack back.” My favorite new picture book, perfect both for laptime and group storytime. A Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book (the prize for picture book writing).
Eleanor LOVES preschool. Even though we are almost halfway through the school year, she still gives an excited little jump whenever we tell her that she’s going. She loves her teacher, loves to play with the preschool toys, and she especially loves her lunchbox.
“I get to go to preschool?” she squeals. “With my lunchbox?” Oh, the glee.
But do you know what? It looks like some of that preschool goodness is rubbing off on the girl. Owing to the fastidiousness of the cubby-and-hook coat storage system at school, Ella has become a stickler for stowing her stuff at home.
“I’m taking off my cooooooat!” she yells as she marches into the house. “I’m gonna hang it uuuuuuuuup!”
The problem is that she doesn’t have the fine motor skills to open the coat closet. So she usually just hangs it on the doorknob. Fine by me. But today . . .
“I’m done hanging up my coooooat,” she sang across the house. “Now can I hang up my shoes?”
Shoes?
“You can take them off if you want,” I reply. “There’s a tray in the kitchen you can put them on.”
“No, I want to HANG THEM UP,” she replies stoutly. I hear the scritch-scritch sound of Velcro shoe-straps, and when I enter the living room a few minutes later I find — yes — a shoe hanging from the closet doorknob. As in, the doorknob is inside the shoe . . . but there’s just one of them. I glance around on the floor for its mate, but there’s none to be seen. I figure it will show up sooner or later and go back to the kitchen.
Where, to my surprise, I find another shoe — hanging on the basement door’s knob.
Baby Shoes by Dashka Slater, illus. Hiroe Nakata. The premise of this cutie is this: Mom gets Baby some new shoes that are sparkling white. However, through the course of the day, the shoes get soiled in a variety of ways — brown mud, red paint, green grass stains — until they resemble a rainbow. While I have to wonder at the wisdom of buying a toddler white anything, there’s no denying the fun to be found in this book’s bouncy story.
This morning Brian spent time doing his latest favorite persuit: shredding papers. (Never is there a man as content and industriously blissful as my Brian with a shiny new gadget.)
He was merrily bzzzzz-ing his way through check stubs from 1998 when he came upon a fat little envelope which contained something fun — a bundle of receipts and a handwritten budget for our honeymoon.
That was back in December of 1999. We went to Yosemite National Park. Trip expenses included:
- Gas purchased in Salt Lake City for $1.32 a gallon
- Rental of a cabin in Curry Village for three nights: $194.68
- The purchase of a dessert called “Obsession” at the Wawona Hotel: $4.25
Yeah, it hasn’t been quite long enough for those prices to seem quaint (except for the gas, maybe). We made our cabin reservations via the Internet, which was considered very cutting-edge and techie then, or at least to our parents. It’s been eight years, but I can still recite the Curry Village Anthem:
Wild strawberry freezes
And fresh mountain breezes
Make Curry the Camp of Delight.
Last Sunday, Brian and I were doing peaceful, quiet things. I was knitting and reading, he was playing a computer game . . . and suddenly we heard a small series of explosions on the street outside.
Pop! Pop pop pop! Pop pop!
BROOKE: Do you hear that?
BRIAN: Yeah . . .
BROOKE: It sounds like firecrackers.
BRIAN: Yeah . . .
BROOKE: But why would someone set off –
BRIAN: — in early February –
BROOKE: — on a Sunday night –
[pause]
BRIAN AND BROOKE: Ohhhhhhh . . .
That’s right, folks. Even though we live in what is generally known as “a drinking town with a football problem,” we had managed to completely forget about the Super Bowl.
It’s happening. The trying, testing time that every parent of a toddler girl fears — something that will cause countless moments of stress and anxiety in the months to come.
Eleanor is developing a preference for the color pink.
Yes, indeed. When given a plastic plate and cup for dinner, it’s whinewhinewhine unless it’s a pink cup and plate. When choosing a hairbow for the daily ponytail, she insists that it be a pink hairbow. When she found my dispenser pack of paper label, she only wanted to take out and stick the pink labels all over the furniture.
“Pink is my favorite color,” she says, relishing the ability to say so.
Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I’ve been all Princess-A-Go-Go since she was born. I’ve thrust diggers and trains at her. We read stories about pirates. Don’t look at me.
Well . . . okay. She was a princess for Halloween two years ago. And there’s been a growing collection of pink toile-y garments in the dress-up box, swelling like a Pepto-Bismol-colored fungus. But really. It’s The World that’s done this. Not me.
“I want to wear a bib, too!” she shouted last week, as we tied a bib around baby William’s neck. Which was followed by our requisite Evil Eye and her faux-meek “A bib, pleeeease.”
Brian went into the kitchen and emerged with — horrors! — a green and orange bib.
“Nooooo! Not that one!” she shrieked. “I want a PINK one!”
Evil Eye, faux-meek “pleeease,” and the only pink bib Brian could find was the one that says “I Love My Big Sister!” on the front. Ella patted the bib down onto her tummy and wiggled her hips happily into the corners of her booster seat. Brian and I couldn’t help but smile at this.
“Oh, do you love your big sister?” Brian asked her.
“Yes. I love Eleanor,” she replied.
For further reading about the obstinate fashion tastes of toddlers:
Ella Sarah Gets Dressed by Margaret Chodos-Irvine. You gotta love the sunshiny jewel-toned silkscreen prints that chronicles Ella Sarah’s efforts to pick out her own clothes, despite what her family would rather have her wear. Read it a few times, and you’ll find yourself joyfully memorizing the list of clothes.
