Ready, Set, Go!

I have only one son and he has only ever had one goal: to avoid being still for any length of time. His nickname was “Turbo.” He shinnied up a 20-foot ladder at Walmart in a split second at two. He chattered and thrashed incessantly in his sleep. He never stopped moving. Ever. So, the hours-on-end reading aloud that his older sister thrived on was not for him. I developed what I dubbed “sniper reading” for Connor. I would grab him under an arm and a book under the other, dive for the couch, flip through as fast as I could pointing out a single thing per page, and then release the whirlwind. He couldn’t handle reading any book longer than that, except one. Something about Jez Alborough’s It’s The Bear! caused a lull in Hurricane Boy. In the book, Eddie goes on a picnic with his mom, who assures the nervous child there are no bears around before she leaves him, alone in the woods, to get a forgotten pie. Naturally, a bear shows up in mom’s absence-- he is big, loud and hungry for food including, possibly, little boys. Eddie hides in a picnic basket trying to stay quiet and off the radar. It was at this point that Connor would curl up tiny, still as a statue, and pretend he was hiding from the bear. I think Scarlett was scared of the bear, but those were rare moments of peace and focus for my very busy boy.

Just Hold On A Second...

When my oldest went to first grade, I followed a suggestion I’d seen in a parenting book and wrapped her lunch with pretty purple paper tied with faux pearls to make her feel special. I waited with anticipation all day for her to come home and report increased joyful self-worth. She came home, but there was no big bonding moment. I didn’t want to bring it up first, but finally couldn’t wait any longer so I asked, “Well….” with a twinkle in my eye. Blank stare. After a little (actually a lot) of coaxing, she finally realized I was asking about her fancy present lunch. Then this child who is still pragmatism personified said, “Mom, it was just food.” Bit anti-climactic, but it did show me that if I had simply stopped for a moment to truly assess the situation, I would have acted differently. That would be good advice for the characters in Mike McClintock’s A Fly Went By. Everybody is freaking out and running from the thing behind them because of what they perceive as malice, ruining the quiet lakeside nap of Calvin’s 1950s twin. As it turns out, if the first one to run had been a bit more discerning, everyone could have chilled out. My daughter wasn’t impressed by the lunch, but she did carry an ornate (and cheap) bronze plant hanger I had given her around for weeks--because she thought it was the key to the Secret Garden. You just gotta pay attention, I guess.

"C" Is Not For Veggie

Having had children in three consecutive decades, I have seen parenting techniques change significantly over the past 20+ years. One of the changes involves attitudes toward physically disciplining kids--basically, to spank or not to spank. When I was young and, to some extent, a young parent, the question was rarely asked because it was considered rhetorical: a misbehaving child needed an attitude adjustment. My dad’s method of corporal “adjustment” was a strategically-placed middle-finger thump on your head that made your body vibrate like a tuning fork. I would rather have been spanked! It seems the view has virtually completely changed now and the main reason cited for not giving kids physical behavior modification is that it teaches violence as a coping method. It makes sense, but I still never walked away from a thump thinking that I could then behave that way, only knowing I wouldn’t be doing whatever I had done to get it again. I reflected on this change the other day when someone told me (inaccurately, it fortunately turns out) that Cookie Monster from Sesame Street is now called Veggie Monster because of healthy eating concerns for kids. I’m a dedicated vegetarian but that made me feel grumpy. So, when I read Scarlett Cookie’s First Book of Numbers published by Bendon Press and part of their new 40th anniversary set, I was very pleased to see that “Monster Cookie” was his old chocolate chip-chomping, crumb-spewing self--and Scarlett didn’t turn into a crazy cookie fiend from the exposure.

Te Quiero

I don’t know if I am a speech teacher because I love language and want to be immersed in it all the time, or if I love language because I am a speech teacher trained to recognize its infinite glories. Either way, words fascinate me, even those in languages I do not speak. Passing on this passion is such a drive within me that I began amassing a library of children’s books while I was still in high school. Consequently, my kids have more books than any ten children could ever use and I still keep adding to the inventory. So, two years ago when I was still reeling over finding out at forty, with my youngest a fourth grader, that I was getting back in the baby game, it made perfect sense to pick up Rebecca Emberley’s little board book Mis Colores, with very basic color and object translations, at a yard sale down the street. Having been born and raised in Southern California, where you pick up a good chunk of Spanish as a matter of course, I already knew many of the words and their pronunciation but it was interesting to read them aloud to Scarlett and realize that the only impediment these new little ones have to knowing literally every word in the human lexicon is our short-sighted inability to teach them. Languages are only hard for adults because, really, if you’re not even two yet, your heart understands that “orange” and “anaranjado”--and people--are the same.

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=129210

http://www.amazon.com/Colors-Mis-Colores-English-Spanish/dp/0316233471

Too Little To Know Better...

I started this adventure with more enthusiasm than sense and more passion than experience. Don’t know how to change my ringtone, let alone create a blog? No problem! Not sure I’ll be able to find enough unique books worth reading? No worries! Haven’t considered the giant nature of a project this ambitious while still working fourteen hours a day? Pshaw! I’m a jump in kinda gal, and jump I did. Don’t get me wrong, I have really loved doing this so far and wouldn’t trade a minute of it, but there were a number of things I never realized would come up, chief among them: When and how often do I read the real gems? I don’t like the idea of getting my favorites in at the beginning and then being left with several months of second-stringers, so I’ve been trying to ration the classics while doing a bit of tooth-gnashing waiting for the cream of the crop. The thing I didn’t count on was that Scarlett doesn’t make such distinctions. She loves the reading experience--with a purity and abandon that I have sadly outgrown. Every book still has the potential for magic undiscovered. I am comfortable with casually flipping through some books just to check them off the list. Scarlett loves every cheesy page like it was from a Caldecott winner. Thus, fancifully, Playful Puppies published by Playmore/Waldman, with its “doogies” that say “bock, bock” (hey, she’s still new here), is every bit as engaging as the heavy hitters.





http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8h=i%3Astripbooks%2Cp_27%3APlaymore%20Waldman&field-author=Playmore%20Waldman&page=1

Praise the Lord?!

Having spent more than three decades immersed in a religious tradition I no longer consider home, pondering Scarlett’s theological education is an exercise in second-guessing myself: Do we need church? Does Scarlett miss out not having formal religious instruction? Are we copping out doing the “we’re spiritual but not religious” thing because Sunday mornings are good for sleeping in? And so on. Nick spent his childhood and teenage years visiting a variety of churches and experiencing a spectrum of religious traditions, so he is more comfortable with a “let things go how they go” approach. Getting twisted up in these existential dilemmas is not his style, but it’s a fairly constant state of being for me. Scarlett seems unfazed by our ambivalence, she just likes what she likes and a book she is particularly drawn to is My First Read And Learn Book Of Prayers by Dr. Mary Manz Simon. I asked her to go get a book this morning when she was being especially fractious and, of the many books on her shelf, she chose the prayer book. Fitting for Sunday, I guess. The book has a kind of quirky charm. It includes the expected prayers for morning, meals and bedtime but it also includes prayers about being sad moving to a new place and feeling displaced by a new baby. We snuggled and she relaxed. We still may have some things to work out, though. There’s a picture of Jesus on the front… and Scarlett calls him Santa.

http://www.marymanzsimon.com/

http://www.amazon.com/First-Learn-Prayers-Little-Shepherd/dp/0439906326

Shhhhh! Baby Sleeping....

In How To Eat Fried Worms the main character, who has bet he will consume a worm every day for a month to get the money for a much coveted mini-bike, almost gets tricked into not making his midnight deadline because he is out on the town having fun. He remembers in time, wakes the neighborhood to witness, swallows a worm whole and barely squeaks in before the stroke of twelve. It was like that here today, but no one ate anything dug up from the yard. Scarlett’s grandma, Oba, came to take us to dinner and a dance performance in another town--both of which were very enjoyable, but left us with one sleepy baby on the return trip. I started to panic and was seriously contemplating either keeping her awake until we got home or pulling a “fried worm” and rousing her with the express purpose of reading her a book before putting her in bed so I could write about it. Have I lost my mind?! I am happy to report (and you are no doubt relieved to hear) that I did neither. I have chosen to review a book Oba (mostly) read to Scarlett earlier in the day while we were trying to bring her down from her televised Elmo fix. We didn’t stray very far though, since Scarlett got to hear about “please” and “thank you” and “nice to meet you” in Elmo’s Good Manners Game by Catherine Samuel. After yesterday’s disappointment, it seemed only fair.

http://www.jacquesdance.com/articles.html

http://www.amazon.com/Elmos-Good-Manners-Sesame-Street/dp/0375804137