Of Donuts And Dinosaurs

The morning after my grandfather passed away, I was in the bakery section of the grocery store looking for bagels. As I contemplated cinnamon raisin or blueberry, I heard an exchange at the donut case that made me a sniffling mess. Two small children, obviously brother and sister, were oohing and aahing over the donuts, trying to choose just one out of all those goodies. At first, I wasn’t quite sure what relationship they shared with the man behind them. He seemed old enough to be grandpa but, having a much younger spouse and regularly being asked if Scarlett is my granddaughter, I’m reluctant to categorize without more evidence. But I got drawn in by what he said next to them and then to me. “Go ahead and pick two,” he said to enthusiastic response. “Why not?,” he said as he looked at me with a good-natured shrug. “Isn’t that what grandpas are for?” As the mom of children who don’t need more than one donut at any given time, I wasn’t totally on board. But as the girl who just lost her grandpa, I tearfully agreed. I’m sure they thought the weepy mute woman in the bakery section was a little off, but they started it. In Hiawyn Oram’s A Boy Wants A Dinosaur, a little boy dreams of a day spent dinosaur shopping with the one person who really understands: his grandpa. My grandfather didn’t give donuts or dinosaurs, just quarters and candy and card tricks. Lucky me.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374408890/teachersnet

http://www.contactanauthor.co.uk/authorpage.php?id=266

Slow And Steady

Slow talkers have a tough time in our family. Even when they have important things to say, they get flattened in the verbal fast lane. True, they are rare but we’ve got a couple. My Uncle Joe, who got the double whammy of marrying a Rives girl, is great at Taboo because he isn’t full of the blurts and splurts the rest of us produce. My Uncle Doug, who married our family’s Auntie Mame, has remained virtually unscathed in our verbal-assault tsunamis by staying silently off the radar. Even my husband has the introvert’s good sense to know when to spectate rather than participate. But the verbal understatement champ is my brother, John. Since he’s now a spoken word performer, you’d never guess he was the quietest kid ever. Once he was standing by our car softly crying but we couldn’t figure out why until we realized two of his fingers were closed in the door. I can just imagine the ungodly noise my kids would have been making. And once he was too quietly trying to tell my mom something. When we finally stopped to listen to him, he told us, “Gabriel’s house is on fire.” Knowing he would have been much more agitated if that were true, my mom pulled up the window shade--to reveal our neighbor’s house engulfed in flames. You gotta listen to the quiet ones or, like in Arlene Mosel’s adaptation of Tikki Tikki Tembo, your brother might be at the bottom of a well.

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


http://www.amazon.com/Tikki-Tembo-Arlene-Mosel/dp/0805006621

Green With Envy

I have the year’s ugliest birthstone. Emerald, ruby, garnet, and topaz are deep and exotic. Amethyst and aquamarine are eye-catching and pastel. Diamond speaks for itself and sapphire is my favorite. And then there’s peridot. Sad, weak, uninteresting peridot looking sickly in comparison. Too much tint for clarity and not enough color for beauty. Not to mention it seems peridot is always set in yellow gold so it ends up looking like some lame lemon-lime concoction. The only compensation for having a crappy birthstone is that at least my grandma also had an August birthday and shared my pain. And her jewelry. When I turned eight at her house in Tennessee, she gifted me a peridot pendant my grandfather had given her long ago, and for once the pale green stone had value. When I promptly lost it, my grandmother found it, kept it, and gave it to me again when I turned sixteen. I wore it to my graduation and I felt a special connection to my grandmother. Besides sharing our birth month and stone, my grandma and I had other special things in common. I got my love of crocheting from her. She let me use her feather pen if I promised to sit nicely. She taught me “Froggy Went A Courtin’” and the importance of polished toenails. The little kitty in Franz Brandenberg’s A Secret For Grandmother’s Birthday wants to find just the right gift for her grandma. I truly wish I still had to do that.

http://www.librarything.com/work/1858464


http://www.bookfinder.com/author/franz-brandenberg/

The Potty Dance

Potty training is the bane of toddler parenting. Much like the end of pregnancy has to be really unpleasant to make labor even vaguely worth considering, two year-old diapers become gross and tedious enough to make the often frustrating and seemingly endless experience of potty training worthwhile. It is the very definition of not fun. Even if you are lucky enough to get a kid who will co-operate fairly well, everybody else is tripping over each other to criticize, critique, expound and advise. Not to judge, naturally. Always with best intentions, of course. But, still…Yeah, right! Potty training is one of those times when other people make it clear on a regular basis that they feel you are doing a poor job in comparison to the paragon of effectiveness they were and their method is. No matter when you start training, their well-adjusted child was ready earlier. Any problems you encounter are a mystery and completely foreign to them. Regression and set-backs were never an issue for their self-assured and confident pee-pee prodigy. And accidents were unheard of. In short, if you and yours don’t sail smoothly through the toilet training process, it is because of some personal deficit or character flaw and never because learning to use the potty is just a complicated and emotionally taxing suck-a-thon. Maybe Kelli Kaufmann could playfully write the whimsical sound-story Potty Time With Elmo because she’s never had kids. Or maybe she just went a little batty during toilet training. It could happen.

http://www.amazon.com/Potty-Time-Elmo-Liittle-Sound/dp/141273486X

http://www.amazon.com/Interactive-Play-Sound-Blues-Room/dp/1412733294

Pup Is Up

My mom raised four academically successful kids. That’s not to say we don’t have other issues and obstacles (because we do--just ask anyone who’s ever met us), but school has always come easily. Between us, there are three teachers, two authors, one attorney, undergrad degrees, grad degrees, professional degrees and enough post-secondary education to make an entire legal drinking-age person. There are any number of factors contributing to this--good genes, clean air, enough healthy food, subsidized public education--but I think the most significant element to our intellectual development was having a mother who is particularly skilled at teaching children how to learn. Once you’ve got that, natural curiosity has a place to go and a framework for what to do when it gets there. Not only did my mom teach us to love knowledge, she tutored a generation of other kids who needed help with basic reading skills. Most weekdays after she came home from working in a Special Ed classroom, she would have several children around the dining room table working on phonics and blended sounds. Kind of like piano lessons with more flashcards and less noise. It often seemed repetitive and tedious, but I have to give her credit because all of those kids improved or achieved literacy from those afternoons working with my mom. The book I remember hearing more often than any other was Dr. Seuss’ Hop On Pop. It was the original Hooked on Phonics. It’s also how I learned to spell “Constantinople” and “Timbuktu.”

http://www.amazon.com/Hop-Pop-Beginner-Books-R/dp/039480029X

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/Dr__Seuss/

No Swiping!

Have you read her a book today? That question gets asked every day now. I like the mindfulness of it. I like the commitment of it. Knowing you should read to your kids daily takes on a different level of import when you’ve publicly guaranteed you will. And so we read--books we buy, books we borrow, old books, new books, some classics, and some newfangled favorites. Whatever catches our interest. Since Scarlett is two generations behind me and one behind her “Transformers-” and “Thundercats“-loving dad, we aren’t always in the know about what’s cool in the small people scene. Every five years or so, the pantheon of characters held in high esteem by the preschool set undergoes transition. Oh sure, some favorites have stood the test of time, but for the most part the popularity shelf-life of any given character isn’t very long. What was all the rage a year or two ago will soon fade into the background. And the measure of how in-the-know a grownup is rests with their familiarity with the current hot properties. Having a ten year gap between my last two girls, I’m just now being fully introduced to the world of Dora the Explorer and her friends. Until now, Addison was too old and Scarlett was too young (well, for anything but that fuzzy, red muppet) to keep me up on Dora, Diego, Backpack, and Swiper. But now, after reading Phoebe Beinstein’s Baby Animals featuring Dora and crew, we’re hip. No hay problema. Adios!

http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Animals-Explorer-Phoebe-Beinstein/dp/0689850174

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=126075

Johnny And Velma

A lot of attention gets paid to falling in love. It has been immortalized in song and poetry. The big screen exists to tell its story. Dance was invented to express its exquisite highs and abysmal lows. Wars have been fought, oceans crossed and peaks scaled in the name of that pristine and perfect moment. We know everything about the majesty of falling in love, but what about the rest of the story? What do we really know about picking up and going on and staying steady after the falling? In an era of broken love stories, there are few examples of love enduring. Most of us don’t know any of those stories. But I know one. A really good one. Teenage John was cool and intriguing. Teenage Velma was sassy and interested. She, a non-smoker, asked him for a smoke. He, nonchalant, gave her one, which she didn’t know how to handle. She, flirtatiously, inquired if he would ask her out and he, bemusedly, said he didn’t date girls who smoked. Thus ended my grandmother’s smoking career and began my grandparents’ love affair. They loved through separation, war, poverty, illness, loss, and tragedy. They loved three children, eight grandchildren, and, to date, nine great-grandchildren. They loved for 72 years and were only apart for about a year until she called him home. Sally Huss speaks of all the different ways to love in I Love You With All My Hearts. She didn’t know them, so she missed a few.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/I-Love-You-With-All-My-Hearts/Sally-Huss/e
/9781400309863

http://www.sallyhuss.com/

Creatively Coping

Can carrying a colossal cache of concern cause a character to crack? It certainly can. In Stan and Jan Berenstain’s “C” is for Clown, the title character, Clarence, is under a lot of pressure. In order to be successful, his act hinges upon his ability to support an increasingly heavy load without collapsing. Since that scenario is the thematic thread of my life, and most likely everyone else’s, I know just how he feels. I wonder sometimes why I feel so stressed out, until I take a look at just my recent history. In the last five years, I’ve been a military wife with a foreign-deployed spouse, had a messy and protracted divorce, fought an ongoing custody battle, had two surgeries, one of them major enough to require updating my will, had no less than two jobs at any time and sometimes as many as four, moved the entire household twice, turned forty, had my brand new car totaled, had a fourth baby, got engaged, got married, and lost both of my grandparents. And everyone I know has a list that long with different, but no less overwhelming, stuff on it. Not that we have it so much worse than our historical counterparts, and in the case of modern conveniences far better, but it’s no wonder none of us can sleep. So, much like Clarence the Clown, we juggle each new thing that gets thrown at us, trying to give each the attention it deserves and demands…hoping we don’t CRASH!

P.S. Happy Birthday, Kristin!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0001714422/frugalreaderc-20

http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-berenstain-jan-stan.asp

Concentration

Not everyone buys Attention Deficit Disorder as a legitimate diagnosis. Those opposed are very staunch in their belief that all kids are squirmy and you can’t foist the repercussions of inept parenting off on a catchall diagnostic category. We have this…er…”discussion” at my house all the time. I know what the other side thinks. I also know what I know. I know that I have seen the profound impact of fractured attention-paying abilities on my son since he was an infant barely able to sit up. I had not yet heard of ADD then, but I knew that something was very different from the other children I had dealt with about the way this child took in, processed, and applied information. Then, one night I was up late (naturally) and saw the repeat of a show featuring an expert in some newly researched condition and several of his adult subjects. As I watched these grown people tap, snap, bend, and squeeze “focus objects” like rubber balls, while they shifted and leaned in their seats, I knew I was seeing my son in twenty years. And I have been fighting for him ever since. Sammy, the little shark in Nick Ward’s Don’t Eat The Teacher, is having some serious impulse-control issues on his first day of school. He’s so excited, he bites tables, chairs, easels, and the book for story time, but his classmates intervene to help him get a grip before he can bite the teacher. Everybody needs help sometime.

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Eat-Teacher-Nick-Ward/dp/0439374650

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=117382

Speak Out

Last week Chico State’s president generated a message condemning the actions of a few hateful people. It seems that some misguided person or group had defaced the campaign poster of a non-white candidate for student government. The behavior was deemed unacceptable, declared intolerable. Then, as 23 year-old Joseph Igbineweka, Chico State’s A.S. president who is from Fresno but is of Nigerian descent, was walking alone in the early morning hours of Sunday, he was attacked and repeatedly stabbed by one of two men shouting racial slurs. He sustained multiple stab wounds, one of them nearly fatal. It was only by chance that Igbineweka’s girlfriend was out of town and not with him, or a horrific event could have been much worse. On Tuesday, Chico Police Chief Mike Maloney referred to the incident as a “brutal assault” “characterized as a hate crime” by the Chico police department. On Wednesday, Chico Mayor Ann Schwab promised united efforts between the city and the university in addressing the attack and its future implications. It seems everyone is up in arms over what the general population wants to dismiss as a random occurrence. Why then did the Chico Enterprise-Record website have to remove the comments option from the e-version of the story due to hate speech? The voice speaking on behalf of tolerance must be louder than the intolerant. Which is why I chose to read Muriel Feelings’ Swahili-alphabet book jambo means hello to Scarlett. I’m loud. She’s loud. I figure that’s a good start.

http://www.chicoer.com/advertise/ci_14912583?IADID=Search-www.chicoer.com-www.chicoer.com

http://www.amazon.com/Jambo-Means-Hello-Swahili-Alphabet/dp/0140546529


http://www.answers.com/topic/muriel-l-feelings

Clothes Call

Kids have their own sense of what they like and don’t like. Rarely do you hear a toddler express ambivalence at which pants they like best or if they want a banana on their cereal or not--because they are right in the middle of “expressing a preference” (read: being a demanding little pain in the neck) about the situation. And it doesn’t end with the preschool crowd, the opinions just evolve and become increasingly laser-sighted. I know you’re supposed to introduce children to a variety of new tastes, people, and experiences to broaden their horizons, but sometimes it seems like a losing battle. What you want is unlikely to be what they want and then it just becomes a showdown to see who blinks first. Some battles are worth fighting more than others, though. When Keilana went through a stage of wearing a sequined-spangled swim cap everywhere, I admired her creativity. When Connor’s daily wardrobe for three months was a too-big, hand-me-down wrestling singlet and galoshes, I applauded his practicality. When Addison decked herself out in just a tutu and black, patent leather lace-up boots, I marveled at her independence. When Scarlett insists on wearing four pairs of my underwear while Nick folds laundry, I think it’s funny. But there are occasions (church, family gatherings, professional photos) when my neurotic side rears its control-freak head and then everyone must comply or face my wrath. Just like the mother in Shirley Neitzel’s The Dress I’ll Wear To The Party. Mom=1, Kid=0.
http://www.amazon.com/Dress-Ill-Wear-Party/dp/0688142613


http://www.shirleyneitzel.com/

Negative Vibes

The parenting timeline goes something like this: you find out you’re expecting, bring home a tiny bundle, spend a few sleepless nights, and baby learns to say “No!.” To say, shout, sing, growl, sign, and even spell “No!” They get barely big enough to have a pulse and then develop an opinion, which is emphatically formed in opposition to anything anyone else is interested in. Connor was pretty sweet-natured, but even he would bust out the “No!” pretty regularly. At 17 months, Connor could say two words: “Donald’s” (as in the Golden Arches) and “No!” Addison was born knowing the negative, even adding her own “Whatever!” spin. She said “No!” to getting dressed, getting bathed, wearing shoes, wearing jackets, wearing anything. She would fight like a tiger against getting strapped in the carseat and then holler out her “nay” vote for the rest of any trip. Even Scarlett has learned inordinately early, in my opinion, to get her “No!” on. Only one specific bowl is acceptable for eating grapes. She won’t tolerate jeans. And hair accessories get a “No!” and an “Off!” But my undisputed “No!” champ was Keilana, who didn’t earn the nickname “Beast” for nothing. If Keilana hadn’t learned to say “No!”, she would have talked only half as much--which would still have been an impressive feat, I’m just sayin.’ Kate, the lead character in Teddy Slater’s N-O Spells NO!, is a blue-eyed, brown-haired little bitty with strong preferences and firm convictions. Sounds like somebody I once knew.

http://www.amazon.com/N-O-Spells-Hello-Reader-Level/dp/0590441868


http://www.jacketflap.com/profile.asp?member=teddybooks

In Living Color

Not all the books we’ve chosen for this project are profound works of literature at first glance. Many of them are pretty standard toddler fare dealing with the basics of letters, numbers, shapes and, most often, colors. Color is one of those things that, once you learn it, can be easy to take for granted. As we read Elmo’s First Book of Colors today, I went into color-noting mode for the first time in forever. I started hearing it in language more frequently than I remember. People are tickled pink and white-hot angry. You know a lot about the people around you (or think you do) just from hearing whether they identify with red state or blue state ideology. And since environmental issues are center-stage and Earth Day is so near, everyone and everything is going green. Clothes that are happy colors can lift our spirits and the colors we wear can define us. New Yorkers stereotypically wear black. Fast women wear red. Girls wear pink. Boys wear blue. And brown wants to know what it can do for you. Hair color can literally change our personalities. Think of the brunette Norma Jean versus the blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. I’ve been every hair color on the spectrum in the last ten years from Wonder Woman black to Dangerous Liaisons blonde to an unfortunate and temporary eggplant. I hadn’t thought about the effect of color in my life for a long time before Elmo gave me a nudge. Thanks, Little Monster!

http://www.amazon.com/Elmos-First-Book-of-Colors/dp/B001GA9J32

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Elmo%27s_First_Book_of_Colors

Don't Care How, I Want It Now!

I used to think that only children were spoiled by indulgent parenting until I had a singleton for five years and realized it isn’t just indulgent parenting. There are some things only children can teach each other. You can’t credibly tell a child not all the toys or attention are for them when they can clearly see there is no one with whom they have to share. I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten at our house until Puppy Surprise. The basic idea of Puppy Surprise was that you purchased a mama dog and concealed inside was an unknown number of babies ranging from one (most likely) to five (very rare). It was such a cleverly marketed idea that we had a dozen people trying to find one for Keilana, who was four. After the initial frenzy, the company found a way to keep kiddie consumers interested: sell the individual puppies in tiny doghouses with their gender being the surprise. Keilana had to have one--but she only wanted a girl. After carefully scrutinizing every box, she chose the perfect one. Naturally, Keilana opened the box, discovered the puppy was a boy, threw a fit and flung the brand new puppy on the floor. I got so angry at her greedy ingratitude I furiously swore never to buy her anything ever again. The parents in Stan and Jan Berenstain’s Get The Gimmies are pretty fed up, too. But Brother and Sister eventually learn grateful behavior. And so did Keilana. Mostly.

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collateral.jsp?id=10559_type=Contributor_typeId=3648

http://www.amazon.com/Berenstain-Bears-Gimmies-First-Books/dp/0394805666

Lost And Found

One of the scariest parts of having children is the idea of losing them. I don’t mean euphemistically losing them (although that is terrifying, too), but truly not being able to find them for any heart-stopping reason. There is a process we go through as soon as we notice a missing kid. We progress from exasperation to concern to panic to shrieking at a decibel level that can shatter glass and only dogs can hear. It seems silly afterwards to have been so distraught because, after all, what are the chances that something scary really happened to your child? But the (admittedly paranoid) way I think is that it happens to someone’s child and I am not exempt from the odds. Reuniting with a lost child also has several steps, beginning with hysterical affection and progressing through to threatening all kinds of things for future occurrences. Connor was famous all over Chico for sending me on the I’ve-lost-a-kid roller coaster ride. Literally every store in town went on red alert at some point because of him. Not only was he fast, he could fit, hamster style, into places a fraction of his size where you would never think to look. I tried everything, from strapping him into the cart to the wildly unpopular baby leashes, to no avail. I’d look away and he’d be gone. The little dog in Cyndy Szekeres’ Puppy Lost loses his mommy but remembers to follow the rules until he finds her. Crisis averted. For now.

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1293/Szekeres-Cyndy-1933.html


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Puppy-Cyndy-Szekeres-Learning-Picture/dp/0307622878

If You Can't Take The Heat...

I come from Southern California. I have an August birthday. I could have taken surfing for P.E. credit in high school. Baby oil is for tanning, lemon juice is for highlighting hair, and shorts are for riding your new Christmas bike. I am a sun-worshiping beach baby who declares an act of God if the temperature dips below 70 and stays home (well, wants to). My version of Hell is not toasty warm, but snowy cold instead. If I were to commit some crime that involved a judge, he or she could truly punish me by sentencing me to snow skiing or ice fishing rather than a cozy cell somewhere. I didn’t choose to be born in California, but I do make a specific point of staying. Two of my brothers, So Cal boys born and bred, now live in Manhattan. Which they love. For part of the year. The months that are filled with bone-chilling, soul-freezing cold and, worse for a West Coaster, snow, are the times they dream of places where the temperature is never measured in negative or single digits. The sound of lawn mowers and the smell of cut grass are part of a perfect day in my book. In Disney’s Pooh’s Very Hot Summer Day, the tubby little cubby is trying to find a friend to enjoy the sun with him, but is unsuccessful because none of the Hundred-Acre Wood folk have an appreciation for the heat. Those acres must be somewhere in New England.

http://www.amazon.com/Poohs-Very-Hot-Summer-Day/dp/B001MVVST8/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271814413&sr=1-4


http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/disney/

Sound Check

They say if it’s too loud, you’re too old. They don’t say too old for what, but whatever it is, I have to stop doing it. Despite a youthful craving for volume, everything is too loud now. The music they play at lunch on Friday at the junior high seems ear-piercing and the volume jumps during television commercials are excruciating. Energetic radio announcers are too loud in the morning and anything above conversational tones after dinnertime sets my teeth on edge. I am so desperate to lower the volume in my world that a lost remote makes me crazy and even led to attaching one of them to the coffee table with yarn. That’s how serious it is. Which really leads me to one question: How did I get here? Didn’t I crank the Mighty 690 when my parents weren’t home? Wasn’t I the girl who blasted Foreigner, Journey, and Styx? Not exactly head-banging stuff, but still it was at full volume. How did I become such a sound wimp? I’d hate to think it’s as cliché as getting older, but it might be. Those kids at school aren’t turning down the music. My kids at home aren’t diving for the mute button. So, age it must be. But, wait. Norman Bridwell’s Clifford’s Noisy Day tells the story of the big red dog as a tiny red puppy who gets a bit overwhelmed by all the sound in his day. Maybe I’m not getting older, the world’s just getting louder.

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


http://www.amazon.com/Cliffords-Noisy-Day-Norman-Bridwell/dp/0590457373

The Size Of Things

Ever since Scarlett showed up almost two years ago, Nick has been expressing his wish for what he calls “adult-size adults”--a special breed of people who are large enough to physically interact with grown-ups as if they were children. He wants one of those big people so that he can have someone pick him up, swing him around, and toss him in the air like he does for Scarlett. I can understand the appeal, but if I got my own larger-than-life person, I imagine that I would appreciate them more for the feelings of security they could bring back into my world than for the fun we could have. It would be so nice to have someone who could carry me when I got too tired, or tuck me into bed when I drift off on the couch downstairs, or, best of all, give me a nice, cozy lap to climb into and make all the hurt the world can do go away for a little while. Wouldn’t that be great? Being grown up is seriously over-rated sometimes. In Ann Herbert Scott’s On Mother’s Lap, a young Inuit boy is seeking refuge and comfort in his favorite spot and bringing all his beloved stuff with him. Scarlett loves to be on a “wap.” She comes over, pushes aside whatever is in the way, clambers up, kicks back and asks for “Rock you baby.” Even though I love being a mommy, being little and lap-sized again does sound awfully tempting sometimes.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Nick/Daddy! We love you so much!
http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=8849


http://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Lap-Ann-Herbert-Scott/dp/0395629764

Somebody Needs A Nap

Naptime is tricky. Daytime noise is really distracting, children have power issues, and it is obviously not dark enough to go “night-night.” So, most parents have to fight the battle of the nap on a regular, possibly daily, basis. My kids have been no exception, but they may have gotten it from me. I can remember coming home from kindergarten and having to take a nap in the slip I wore under my school dress, which was the standard little girl uniform in 1972. I seethed with resentment over having to nap when I could hear the rest of the world going about their business. The one tiny consolation was that my mom would let me sleep in her big bed. Ironically, nowadays, I would write someone a check if it meant that I could have a mid-day siesta. Keilana didn’t object to the confinement of napping, but had supersonic hearing that could detect the melody of the “i-ka-sreem” man, who always came at naptime, miles away. Connor couldn’t bear missing a moment of daytime action and even pushed a milk crate under his window one morning to facilitate escape later on. Poor Addison might have been a good napper, but being the third child and getting wagged around all over the place, we’ll never know. And Scarlett literally has to drop where she stands sometimes. Sister Critter from Mercer Mayer’s Just A Nap feels their pain and fights valiantly against the dreaded nap. But the Sandman always wins eventually.

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Nap-Look-Look-Mercer-Mayer/dp/0307117138

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

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

My first home had a dark, weathered, wooden fence around the backyard. On one side, the fence had a large gate that was always a little rickety until it finally came off its hinges one eventful Saturday afternoon. Seeing this as an adventure opportunity, my brothers and I drug the gate to the center of the sea of knee-high grass that was our yard to become a raft. Before setting sail, we stocked up on provisions and necessities. For me, that always included a baby doll. For this fateful rafting trip, I chose Baby Tender Love, but I had to change her standard shirt, bloomers, and pink booties, which were going to be completely inappropriate for an outdoor expedition. So, I chose my favorite doll dress: a hot pink, green and white little number perfect for playing in the sunshine. Unfortunately, the sunshine didn’t stay. It began to rain and we ran for cover, leaving our cargo behind to face the elements. Realizing immediately that my baby was still out there, I wanted to run back out and rescue her but my mom vetoed the idea. Sadly, I had to watch out the window for three days before the weather broke. Now, Baby Tender Love was weather-resistant but the dye from her fancy dress wasn’t…so her torso was stained bright pink forever more. I think of that experience whenever I read Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat. It was too wet to go out, it was too wet to play…


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

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/039480001X/

Weird Science

I recently heard someone say that toddlers are natural-born scientists--curious about the workings of everything and constantly performing experiments to make sense of their world. Even though I’ve spent my life with children, my own and others, I had never visualized the behaviors of little ones in just that way. It certainly puts some tendencies, including frustrating ones like slobbering on everything, climbing dangerously high, and demanding that someone repeatedly retrieve purposely dropped items, into a more interesting and less aggravating perspective. Thank goodness something can because kids aren’t just scientists, they are mad scientists recklessly creating danger “monsters” they don’t yet have the skills to navigate and need constant intervention from big-people lab assistants to keep from perishing. In Michael J. Fox’s recent biography, he tells of having the opportunity to spend large spans of time with his youngest child when his illness forced him to work less than when his older children were little. He discovered that tending a toddler is like being on “24-hour suicide watch” because they are always trying to kill themselves. Amen. When Connor was two, he kept complaining about “it” being “hot, Mama, hot.” I could not figure out what was burning him until I pulled out a couch to get to a hidden outlet and found a set of keys stuffed in one of the slots. Crazy kid had electrocuted himself with curiosity. “Ladybug” magazine’s monthly toddler books, called “Babybug,” show little ones experiencing all kinds of new things--always under close supervision.

P.S. Connor was saved from himself right after this picture was taken.

P.S.2 Happy Birthday, Keilana! I love you.
http://www.babybugmagkids.com/

Get Up And Go!

In the spring of 2002, I had a choice: move out of the apartment I couldn’t afford due to divorce into a smaller apartment or live nowhere for the summer and travel with my kids. So, I put everything in storage, tuned up and packed my little red car, Fury, bought Walmart, gas, and telephone cards for emergencies, MapQuested every destination I could imagine, wedged a portable TV/VCR combo in between the front seats facing the back and hit the open road with a four year-old and a second-grader. For the next two months, we didn’t live anywhere except campgrounds and the occasional motel room. I had purchased a little propane campstove and a pop-up tent that I could put up by myself in five minutes flat. We went to Black Butte Lake, Santa Barbara carousel and zoo, Circus Circus in Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and other places, stopping every two hours to stretch our legs. We traveled over two thousand miles eating, sleeping, browsing, playing and sightseeing whenever we wanted. We swam in the ocean, two lakes, and a bunch of swimming pools. We saw lots of new things and met some really wacky characters. It was an amazing summer and I’ll remember it forever. The dog from Debra and Sal Barracca’s Maxi the Star and his cab-driving owner drive from New York to California, seeing some incredible things, but coming home is the best part of their trip. I know just how they feel.

http://www.amazon.com/Maxi-Picture-Puffins-Debra-Barracca/dp/0140565574

http://www.amazon.com/Debra-Barracca/e/B000APPDJI

I'll Eat You Up!

Connor is my only son and the easy-going one. He was ordinarily such a sweet-natured child that his occasional bad day seemed ten times worse than the girls’ and his infrequent anger outbursts made a bigger impression. Once when he was in kindergarten, he had one of those days. He was being pretty grouchy in the back seat of the van. He started demanding something, I don’t remember what, in a very bratty way and I told him, “no.” All of a sudden, he shouted, “I hate you! The next time you need a can opener, don’t come running to me!” Now, I know that moms are supposed to respect their children’s feelings, but I couldn’t help myself. I started giggling, then laughing, then guffawing over how hilarious the whole thing was. What does that even mean? When did I ever need a can opener from him in the first place? Why did he consider that the ultimate threat? Too hysterical. Really. The more I laughed, the madder he got and I swear he would have run away forever if he could have figured out how to get past the child locks on the door. What a wild thing! He reminds me of another naughty little boy with a mean mommy having a bad day. Maurice Sendak knew what he was doing when he wrote Where The Wild Things Are. In angry little Max, he tapped into the essence of childhood angst--helplessness, anger, being misunderstood and unappreciated. Let the wild rumpus begin!

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wild-Things-Maurice-Sendak/dp/0060254920

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