Put Up Your Dukes

In an apparent tribute to the days when knights jousted in contest for the favors of fair maidens, Scarlett’s new favorite thing is for us to “fight” over her. As soon as there are two big people who love her in close proximity, she plunks herself in the middle demanding that one person “hold my feet” and the other “hold my hands.” Then she gives the final direction: “Now say ‘mine’.” So, we grab hold of the proffered bits and begin an epic mock battle for Scarlett Supremacy. We pull back and forth, hollering out our claims to her, until someone finally “wins” and gets the baby for their own until the next round. And she squeals with maniacal laughter the whole time. Since kid reaction is usually pretty authentic, there must be some primal need we have to know that we’re worth fighting for. And since parents are the ones most heavily tasked with meeting the needs of their children, we spend much of our parenting time doing just that. We feed them and house them and clothe them, sure, but we also take care of their spirits, even when they’ve grown. I have one “baby” who’s older now than I was when I had her, but I still worry every day about her happiness. And I always will. In Sam McBratney’s Let’s Play In The Snow, a mama rabbit gives it her best to tell her baby bunny all the ways she loves him. He really likes that.

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Play-Snow-Guess-Storybook/dp/0763641081

http://www.answers.com/topic/sam-mcbratney

Girls Gone Wild

My mom is one of those big idea people who come up with some notion and then never let it go until it either becomes reality or breaks their heart with its impracticality. And for a really long time she had her mind made up that one day all her double-X chromosome family would get together for what she dubbed the “Girls’ Trip.” She talked about this trip for years before anyone even considered it, and then talked about it some more before any actual plans were made. In all that time, she never let go of the dream that one day she, her sister, her niece, her only daughter, and her (at the time) only granddaughter would pile into a car, forget about personality conflicts, aim toward the horizon, and go. And she knew just where she wanted us all to end up: the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Now, my mom was born in Tennessee, but she got the ocean in her veins as a teenaged transplant to Southern California and developed a special fondness for water animals, especially the cute ones, so her choice was no surprise to anyone. Thus, we decided to grant her wish. All of us, that is, except my aunt, who declared the whole thing madness. But go the rest of us did and, despite a few bumps, brought the Girls’ Trip into being. In Victoria Miles’ Pup’s Supper, two Monterey Bay seals get some chow. But I think one of them was a boy.

http://www.amazon.com/Pups-Supper-Victoria-Miles/dp/1878244221

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Victoria-Miles/author/

Trouble Brewing

In the Small Group Discussion class, we frequently talk about how various issues and concepts affect group dynamics. One of the most easily recognizable influences is the idea of synergy--that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Everyone has those synergy moments, times when group chemistry just clicks and the end product is much better than anything any one person could have envisioned. But, like most everything, there is a downside to the idea of synergy, times when things go much, much worse in the group than they would have solo. That concept is referred to as negative synergy and it can take down sports teams, prom committees, think tanks and just about every other type of small group there is. You know there’s a group of people you get in more trouble with than any others, and you probably have the stories (and maybe tattoos and mug shots) to prove it. The comedian Jeff Foxworthy claims that your best friend can never bail you out of jail because, if they are truly your best friend, they are in there with you. And while negative synergy is often bad for a group’s productivity, it does seem to carry with it a chaos component that makes things a bit more exciting. In Richard Egielski’s 3 Magic Balls, a trio of rubber balls on the toy store shelf comes to life as three bouncy brothers bent on causing mayhem. They drive Rudy crazy, but he buys them anyway. Mischief managed.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Magic-Balls-Richard-Egielski/dp/0060260327

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Egielski

Amnesia

One thing you forget as your children grow older is how excruciatingly long it takes to do anything with a little one. Once the youngest gets into all-day school and can undo their own seatbelt, you get amnesia about the way an errand that should take five minutes becomes an agonizing study in how much human patience can be tested without disappearing completely. They resist the car seat, get spaghetti legs in parking lots, dash away at the front of a long line so you lose your place trying to retrieve them, touch everything, and altogether refuse to make even the simplest tasks easier. It’s as if they have boundless energy, the ability to teleport, and wiles far beyond their years. And getting back into the parenting game at forty, ten years after thinking I was done, not only gave me plenty of time to get a foggy memory, it also gave me a decade to get more easily prone to exhaustion. The other day I made the mistake of ignoring my instincts and experience and took Scarlett with me to do a little running around. Boy, was I sorry. I could swear when I left the house she was an ordinary little girl but, by the first stop, she had morphed into a naughty, mischievous, trouble-making monkey. And I came home a stressed-out wreck. In Jane Belk Moncure’s One Tricky Monkey Up On Top, Melissa spends the entire book trying to corral one monkey. I know how she feels.

http://www.amazon.com/Tricky-Monkey-Magic-Castle-Readers/dp/1561893765

http://www.janebelkmoncure.com/fsrsbbhome.htm

Word Power

At a baby shower recently, one of the gifts was Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends. The first thing the mother-to-be did was open the front cover and say, “Oh good, you wrote in it.” And I reflected for a moment on all the inscriptions I’ve seen this year during our reading experiment--some written in crude baby letters, some written by beloved people long gone, some wise and profound, others silly or cryptic. I’ve had so many sweet moments this year turning to flyleaf pages as the faces and voices of dear people have come to life again, that I wish I’d done this sooner. But one aspect I did not expect was to encounter the sentiments of so many folks I’ve never met. In order to keep our stock replenished without breaking the bank, we did a lot of shopping at thrift stores, checking out offers on Freecycle, and rummaging through yard sale stacks, so we brought plenty of previously-owned reading material home. And it made me sad how often these books had heartfelt inscriptions now cast aside. I can’t imagine discarding a book with the words of someone I love inside, but, on the bright side, the books we added to our collection have found new life and become valuable again. My Hidden Treasure Chest’s God’s Special Gifts To Me was designed specifically for one little girl named Chelsi. I don’t know how her book ended up at the thrift store, but it’s got a new home now.

http://myhiddentreasurechest.com/personalized_books

Memory Maker

I get nostalgic over mildew. Well, more accurately, I get nostalgic over the smell of old buildings, which is largely caused by mildew. It sounds strange, I know, but if you have ever been to or lived in the South, particularly if all your warm, fuzzy grandparent memories fall squarely on the Confederate side of the Mason-Dixon Line, you know what I’m talking about. It is so damp there so much of the time, being as close to a tropical climate as that area is, that kudzu flourishes, humidity is queen, and every building material with the possible exception of the ubiquitous red brick is doomed to the kind of deterioration that makes old buildings smell like old buildings. My grandmother once sent me a box of family history paperwork that I have yet to photocopy because when I open the box, I still get a moment of being in Tennessee when that old-building attic aroma sneaks out. I’ve heard many times that scent is the sense most closely aligned with memory. I don’t know if that is generally scientifically accurate, but I do know it is true in my personal history. It is not unusual for me to stop what I’m doing until I can identify whatever is causing me to experience a “scent memory.” And to make everyone else stop with me. In Al Perkins’ The Nose Book, we get to see all the good things about having a built-in nostalgia device. Appreciating old buildings is my favorite.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Grandpa! I miss you more than you could ever know.

http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Early-Books-Beginning-Beginners/dp/0394806239

http://www.librarything.com/author/perkinsal

Walt Disney World

When I think of how much influence Walt Disney has had in my life, it’s strange to realize we never shared the planet. My earliest memories, like most people my age and younger, center around things Disney, yet Walt passed away several months before I was even born. We all grew up in pre-VCR America watching the old-school classics like “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” and “Bambi,” every seven years in the theater. And there was a certain magic to those films that I believe came from the vision of Walt Disney himself, because it just wasn’t the same for a long time after he was gone. The last animated feature to have been produced under his watchful eye is “The Jungle Book,” which hit theaters Christmas 1967, not quite a year after the House of Mouse lost its master. Then came a pretty extended dry spell broken only by the undersea adventures of Ariel and her crew a generation later. The touch of Walt Disney is easy to see in the telling of Mowgli’s story--examining the definition of family, stressing the importance of loyalty and relationships over conforming to societal norms, well-meaning but often bumbling good triumphing over sleek yet heartless evil. It took more than twenty years after Walt Disney’s death for the studio to remember that those themes have a purity and clarity of purpose any generation can relate to. In the Random House version of The Jungle Book, all our favorite characters are present. As it should be.

http://catalog.ebay.com/Walt-Disneys-Jungle-Book-Rudyard-Kipling-1974-Hardcover-Illustrated-/2664903

http://www.randomhouse.com/

For Love Of The Library

One of my favorite childhood memories is library day at Atherwood Elementary. Not only did library day have the advantage of breaking up the typical routine of the school day to make it seem special, it also ended with the best prize ever: a new-to-me book to tote home and lose myself in. Our school library was tiny--no more than a big closet, really--and the close quarters did not allow for very many bodies or extended perusing. Wandering in the stacks for hours or pulling multiple books from the shelves just to scan through the pages was for trips to the public library. The school library was all about business. Two rows of chairs facing each other lined the narrow hallway outside the library door and only a few students were allowed in at a time. While the rest of us waited. Most of the time I thought I would go mad with anticipation. I truly resented every second the other kids (most of whom were at the front of the line because they behaved boorishly in the first place) took to find their books. I knew none of them cared about reading as much as I did and I felt that should matter. The only downside to library day was that it didn’t come often enough. A week is too long between books. In Anna McQueen’s Lola at the Library, Lola feels my pain. She hates to wait for her book fix, too. A girl’s gotta have her books.

http://www.amazon.com/Lola-at-Library-Anna-Mcquinn/dp/1580891136

http://www.annamcquinn.com/

And That Has Made All The Difference

A student recently asked the class if a book had ever changed their lives. Since reading is neither a strong suit nor a popular pastime of the college demographic, many students seemed puzzled by his question. Some disagreed with the notion that something as basic as a book could be life changing. But a few of us, a precious few, knew just what he was asking. Heads nodded enthusiastically, and the literature in our veins spilled out in excited babble. Has a book ever changed my life? Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. Changed my life, added to my life, saved my life, made my life better, bearable, bittersweet. Harper Lee taught me what being brave in the face of inexcusable ignorance looks like. J.D. Salinger gave voice and meaning to my pain and angst. Kurt Vonnegut showed me truth in absurdity. Elie Weisel broke my heart, pierced my soul, and made redemption real. I even belong to a reject-consumerism group that has “W.W.C.I.D.” (“What would Caroline Ingalls do?") as a mantra. But perhaps I was most affected by a slim volume easily read in one sitting. Antoine de Saint-Exupery was not even forty when he put pen to paper and created the profound work of self-discovery The Little Prince. It is so physically insubstantial, one could never guess its philosophic weight. But it should always be read by everyone. I chose Counting With The Little Prince for Scarlett because I couldn’t bear for them to be strangers any longer.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/Counting-Little-Prince-De-Saint-Exupery/book/0152

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry

I Told You So

One of the most frustrating things for a mother to be is right. Despite what our teenagers and toddlers think, we don’t want to be right because that usually means we have predicted some dire outcome, been resoundingly assured we are wrong this time, and lived, once again, to see our ability to predict the future fully validated. You’d think we could get some sort of satisfaction out of this. But we don’t, because we are most often the ones who have to fix whatever went awry after we predicted it would. I can’t even count how many gallons of liquid I have sopped up after being begged for a “full glass this time and I promise I won’t spill.” I don’t know how many knees I have bandaged after my warnings of potential injury went unheeded again. I never want to add up all the money I have spent for uneaten restaurant food that a “starving” child just had to have and then left untouched. But the worst I-was-right is when a child insists on bringing some impractical item that they swear on their lives they can’t live without and will carry until their arms fall off…and it ends up getting dumped off on you about five minutes after leaving the car. That makes me crazy. In Helen Oxenbury’s Tom And Pippo Go For A Walk, Tom insists on bringing Pippo despite his mother’s suggestions…and Pippo ends up in the mud. At least mom didn’t have to carry him.

http://www.amazon.com/TOM-PIPPO-GO-WALK-Oxenbury/dp/0689712545

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Oxenbury

Scrap Happy

Whenever I see the warning signs for addiction, I can’t help thinking about my relationship with scrapbooking. Not to minimize the challenges people face in overcoming their demons, just to acknowledge the similarities between all kinds of fixations. As I talk to my students about the secret codes groups develop in their communication, I use scrapbook lingo and insider knowledge as examples. When I mention photo split squares fluttering out of your clothing and a few students non-verbally react with knowing glances at their friends, I know I’ve found a scrapping sister (or maybe brother someday). When I tell the story of seven year-old Keilana dragging a friend back up the stairs to slide down again in sleeping bags because “you can’t make a decent page with only two pictures,” the croppers get it. But the biggest connection seems to come when I admit to having staged my kids’ activities to match stickers or paper I want to use. Sad, but true. Also very common in scrapbooking circles. We’ve tried to get our children to eat popsicles adorably. We’ve draped our babies over pumpkins. But more than anything, we’ve dumped our kids in giant piles of leaves raked just for picture-taking occasions. I don’t think my kids have ever spontaneously played in the leaves, but I have many pages of pictures of them doing it--because there’s lots of really cute autumn paper. In Betsy Franco’s Fresh Fall Leaves, the kids are having fun. I wonder if it was their idea?

http://www.amazon.com/Fresh-Fall-Leaves-Betsy-Franco/dp/0590962965

http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Betsy-Franco/1941168

Cold Shoulder

I like winter activities in abstract. I’ve enjoyed cutting out paper snowflakes, buying cute mittens, and watching “Frosty the Snowman” every Christmas. I think snow angels look cool, ski lifts look exhilarating, and steaming hot chocolate looks delicious. I understand the appeal of winter stuff--it’s the practical application where my interest wanes. As I’ve admittedly mentioned before, I’m not a big fan of the cold. And by fan, I mean having any love for. And by cold, I mean below 70 degrees. I embrace my weather wimphood with Southern California-born, Golden State-bred, sun-soaked pride, but I can understand, in theory, the attraction of the white stuff. I would much rather stay in the crackling-fire lodge than go down the mountain, but there is something impressive about the folks who swoosh with style. I could never swoosh with anything but the dangerous awkwardness where emergency room visits are born, so I have to envy the ones who can. I have always wanted to be the kind of person who loads up the car with inner tubes and hits the roadside slopes with all my winter-loving friends, but all I can think about when contemplating such a day is that there is no way my toes will stay warm enough to make the tubing worth it. Wimpy, I know. But it’s who I am. In Shirley Neitzel’s The Jacket I Wear In The Snow, one little girl crashes her sled…but thanks to a million layers of clothes, it’s no harm, no foul.

http://www.amazon.com/Jacket-I-Wear-Snow/dp/0688045871

http://www.shirleyneitzel.com/activities.htm

The Name Game

I recently saw a site for the “Top 100 Baby Names” of 2010 and two of my daughters are on the list. I felt a tug of annoyance at this since I have had some misplaced pride over finding unique names for my kids and bucking the trends. But I got over it pretty quickly as my eye was caught by another link: the “Top 100 Pet Names” of 2010. And what I saw surprised me. In the past couple of years a strange phenomenon has been occurring: the baby name list and the pet name list have been growing more comparable until now the top names are just a few places off from list to list. Since people have not become more likely to name their children Fluffy and Spot, that can only mean pet owners are more likely to name their animals people names. It makes sense--people are delaying parenthood more than in the past and the place is now filled with pooches and kitties. And everything that goes with that. There are pet pictures with Santa that then make it to the family Christmas card. People have Facebook pages for their four-legged kids. Many people refer to the pets of their grown children as their “grandpets.” Mother’s Day greetings now include women with “furry children.” And so on. In Judi Barrett’s Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing, there are a lot of ways animals are not like people. But I know a lot of people who disagree.

http://www.amazon.com/Animals-Should-Definitely-Wear-Clothing/dp/0689708076

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judi_Barrett

Temper, Temper

There’s a reason the twos are referred to as terrible. And it’s because they have to be called that in the name of accuracy. I know some people say two is not some evil threshold that, once crossed, leads to a place of bizarre brat behavior and three-alarm fits. But they have either never met a two year-old, are in massive denial, or both. That first even number birthday is D-Day (as in drama) for the battles to come. No piece of clothing they have to wear, should wear, or you want them to wear will be donned without and until a meltdown of cataclysmic proportions. Sharing is like being burned with acid. Bed, bath, and beyond are contact sports. What they ate yesterday with relish and abandon will prompt a screamfest today if it is even suggested, or, god forbid, placed in front of them on a plate that was their favorite at breakfast but is now a loathed albatross from which they must escape. And so on. Virtually every moment of every thousand-hour day. It makes sense--they are big enough and aware enough to have preferences but too small to get what they want most of the time--but it sure is tough for the big people who have to ride the conniption roller coaster on a regular basis. In Edna Mitchell Preston’s The Temper Tantrum Book, all the baby animals in the jungle are expressing their frustration. And every living thing in a ten-mile radius knows about it.

http://www.amazon.com/Temper-Tantrum-Book-Mitchell-Preston/dp/0140501819

http://www.alibris.com/search/books/author/Preston,%20Edna%20Mitchell

Simply Superb

One of the nice things about starting over in the kid department is getting to spend a lot more time with the caboose baby than you ordinarily would with number four. Having a hubby who is out of school for winter break and starting work later in the day yourself doesn’t hurt either when you are trying to carve out some unstructured family time. This morning all three of us got to sleep in and then we all piled on Scarlett’s big bed and watched “Superman II” with about a hundred blankets and pillows to stay cozy. When those amazing opening credits backed by incredible John Williams music started swooping in, I flashed back to watching the movie in the theater for the first time and how riveted I was. Just about then, the big Kryptonian “S” symbol blazed onto the screen, and Scarlett jumped up shouting, “Just like me! That letter is for our Scarlett!” Which is true. Anytime I see an “s” now, I associate it with my baby. But that also happens to me with the first initial for all my kids. What were just letters to me before I got to meet each of my small people suddenly become specific to very special people, and thus more interesting. In Jane Belk Moncure’s My “s” Sound Box, Little S piles all the things that sound like him in one place. There are shoes and sweaters and socks and even a sandcastle. That’s because “s” is super special.

http://www.amazon.com/My-Sound-Box-New-Books/dp/1567667856

http://www.janebelkmoncure.com/fsrsbbhome.htm

Back It Up

The other day I saw a wishing well. It was actually a wooden planter made to look like a wishing well, but that doesn’t matter when you have a good imagination, you’re two, or both. Scarlett has been pretty enthralled by “Snow White” lately so I knew she would get excited about it. Now, planters don’t just spring up by themselves, they get placed in yards by people--and the yards are ordinarily theirs. So, if you didn’t put a wishing well with violets or cyclamen somewhere, chances are pretty good you have to trespass to see it. Which is a dilemma, right? I made a point of drawing her attention to this cool thing that belonged to someone else, and now she was interested. Understandable, but not the best “respecting privacy” lesson. It’s entirely likely that anyone with enough whimsy to put a flowering wishing well in their yard wouldn’t mind if a two year-old Snow White fan took a trespassing peek, but maybe not and certainly not everyone would feel that way about the invasion. It’s one of those moments when you realize, belatedly, that you made a bad parent call and then have to back up a bit. We compromised by standing on the public sidewalk and looking at the wishing well. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best I could do. In Megan E. Bryant’s Snow White, Strawberry Shortcake and her berry best friends replay the classic story. But they do it without breaking any laws.

http://www.amazon.com/Snow-White-Berry-Strawberry-Shortcake/dp/0448444585

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/91762.Megan_E_Bryant

Anticipation

An experienced expectant-mom friend and I came to the agreement that what you think having a baby is going to be like while waiting for your first bears only the slightest resemblance to what having a baby really turns out to be. Which is not really news, but the things that end up being the most different aren’t what you’d think they’d be. And one of the most surprising realizations is, despite fantasizing over how amazing having a tiny, new creature all to yourself will be--with their sweet smell, precious mews, and bitty toes--that when they first get here, they don’t do a lot of interesting things yet. They are miraculous, true, but the real fun stuff doesn’t start showing up for several months, and the most captivating behavior is still a couple years down the road. I remember worrying during my pregnancy with Keilana how I was going to feel about the baby once she got past the infant stage and became a toddler. The second time around, I fretted about how to get through that helpless infant stage while anticipating the fun and funny toddler age. It works that way for older siblings, too. Everyone in the house is so antsy to get the new baby here and then there’s not much to do with them when they arrive. In Alyssa Satin Capucilli’s Biscuit Wants To Play, our doggie friend can’t wait to play with the new kittens--but they aren’t much fun for awhile. That’s how babies are.

http://www.amazon.com/Biscuit-Wants-Play-First-Read/dp/0064443159

http://www.alyssacapucilli.com/