Twenty-some odd questions: 6yo younger lad

A couple of weeks ago, our tender-hearted, fun-loving, precious younger lad earned another candle on his (King Boo of Super Mario Brothers) birthday cake.  He remains imaginative, thoughtful, sensitive, generous, cheerful, friendly, and enthusiastic.  In the past year, he has grown taller, kinder, sillier (if that's possible), rougher, and keener than ever on being a valiant young squire.  How blessed we are to have him in our midst.

***

Some of his preferences have changed, but his sweet nature is still his hallmark. 

How does it feel to be six?
good [his stock answer to most open-ended questions, by the way]

What's the best thing about being six?
opening presents

What do six-year-olds do?
go to first grade

What's the most important thing you've learned in life so far?
being good to God -- not being an evil person

What do you like most about yourself?
being a redhead

self portrait

Are you a morning person or evening person?
I'm a morning person!

What do you like learning about?
how to play Star Wars

Do you know what God's plan is for your life?
to be a good person

What's your favorite thing to do with Daddy?
play

What's your favorite thing to do with Mama?
ride in the car... to the ice cream shop.

What do you like most about our family?
a lot

The lad's Kindergarten teacher conducts interviews as well.

What do you like to do with our family?
I like going to the zoo.

What are some of your hobbies?
playing battle

What's your favorite color?
red

What's your favorite TV show?
Wild Kratts

What's your favorite movie?
the pod racer scene from Star Wars

What is your favorite food?
cinnamon rolls

What is your favorite dessert?
mint chocolate chip ice cream

Your favorite thing to wear?
my Mario overalls

What sports do you like to play?
baseball, soccer, basketball... that's pretty much all the sports I know how to play.

What's your favorite thing about Kindergarten?
nap time because I like to read my Star Wars book

What's your favorite subject in school?
PE

What do you want to be when you grow up?
an army soldier

May the Lord bless you all the days of your life, dear lad, and preserve both your sunny disposition and your zeal for life and the world around you.  May he guard your heart and fan into flame the desire you have to serve him as he calls you to. And may you always remember how precious you are to us.

Friday night live

Earlier this evening...

All four bambini are out in the garage with my beloved.  Tomorrow is the Pinewood Derby for the elder lad's Cub Scout pack, so the lad and his dad are putting the finishing touches on his lustrous truck (another one).  Through the open door I can banging, clanging, scuffling, and the younger lass yelling jubilantly "here we go!"  She and her sister are sitting in the green wagon that is rarely used for outings to the neighborhood playground anymore.  The younger lad is nearby in a stance that reads "train conductor" although he is wearing a black shirt vest (over his white school uniform polo) with green felt strategically cut and placed to look like what Chris Kratt wears on the lads' favorite show Wild Kratts graciously made for him by the mother of one of his classmates after hearing how much he, his brother, and his sisters enjoy that show.  The lasses say they are going to the beach. I'm not sure how the lad fits in the beach trip, but I have every confidence that he's got a plan.  Maybe they're taking the train to the beach.

How they love to go tinker around in the garage with their dad, sometimes stomping around in the bed of his truck, sometimes dabbing paint on small blocks of wood like the elder lass did last year as her brothers painted their Derby cars, sometimes using tools on a project with his skilled and immediate guidance.  The younger lad won't get to enter a car in the Pinewood Derby until next year when he is a first-year Cub Scout, but he's made a car (or is this year's a boat?) both years alongside his brother. 

The outcome of tomorrow's Pinewood Derby is anyone's guess, and we're not worried about that.  The process of creating, crafting, and finishing the cars has been the real prize.

The day has had its ups and downs, from these amicable sounds, school Mass, and lunch with a cherished friend to displays of fury from tired, frustrated bambini and sibling squabbles that are nothing new.  The scene in the garage ended when the lasses came in to get ready for bed and the Derby truck with freshly-installed wheels came in to cure overnight. Then it was the usual nuttiness that is the bedtime routine.

I'm sure glad I stepped away from folding laundry to take in the sights and sounds out in the garage.  It was a moment meant to capture forever.

taking notes

close-to-six-year-old younger lad to his sister the four-year-old elder lass,
with whom he is usually a jovial and willing playmate
(even when the game suggested is playing house):
"Why do you like to play mom?"

elder lass: "because you get to have a purse"

In typical fashion, the four-year-old elder lass has zeroed in on an aspect of the world around her and made it the linchpin of her carefully-considered plans.   As a mother, which she wants to be, she'll tote a purse around (likely with several books and who knows what else, like her own mother) -- but she does that already.

The elder lass at four years old has a very basic, age-appropriate understanding of how mamas are built by God to care for babies.  Realizing how closely the lass is watching me, the other women in her life, and her young girl friends (and taking notes, as evidenced by the purse reference, among others), I am ever mindful of my own attitudes, habits, and comments about myself and others.  I'm also humbled to think of imperfect I am, how prone I am to impatience even as I try to handle sticky situations with humor and fortitude.  I hope she and her siblings grow to be better at that than I am.

Yes, I do know she is four years old.  Remember I take a long view.

Should the Lord call the lasses to be mothers someday, I know they will draw from many sources (including the legacy their mother leaves for them) in approaching their journeys, which likely will not be exactly the same as my own.  As they seek to understand themselves and what roles they are called to play in this world, they will find many pundits -- not all of them trustworthy -- all too willing to supply them with information about what it means to be a woman nowadays.  Thankfully, we have recourse to a wealth of good, insightful, and spiritually-sound resources to help them wade through the static.

Just as Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, so too are mothers who are seeking to care for the children entrusted to them both physically and spiritually.  The love we have for our children is a reflection of God's love for us. When we submit to the Lord's will and seek to conform ourselves more closely to it every day, the grace that flows freely is that which makes a job well done possible. 

I pray all our bambini will grow and flourish in the knowledge of God's love for each of them through the care they receive from our hands, so that they might in turn someday lead their little ones to Christ. 

birthday books

The four-year-old elder lass's deep and abiding love for books is well-chronicled here.  She comes by it honestly from both sides.  So for her recent birthday, some gifts were a given.  She had one specific book request: The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen (I reviewed it here).  I took the liberty of selecting a few others, including a couple of Toot and Puddle books (review here); Sugar Cookies, one of the Cookie books (review here); and this feast for the eyes by Tasha Tudor:

Ms. Tudor was one of those illustrators whose prolific work is iconic -- it evokes feelings of nostalgia, beauty, and wonder.  In this story, two little girls are admiring their grandmother's antique doll named Annabelle and all her accoutrement.  Each page of this doll's alphabet is intricately adorned with details from Annabelle's dresses, furniture, and accessories to floral borders around each scene.  I could easily sit and stare at each page, but the lass urges me to turn and keep reading (or say "beep," much like the sound effect on an audiobook, so she knows to turn the page herself).

This beautiful book ranks high among my other favorite doll books and is one I hope the lasses will continue to pore over for a long time to come.

We weren't the only ones to think books would make good gifts for our lass.  She received, among others, The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr from her aunt and uncle.  I don't know if they knew beforehand, but this book is on my top five list of favorite children's books ever.  It is so charming.  Sophie and her "mummy" are having tea when they receive an unexpected visitor: a tiger.  He's hungry and asks if he may join them for tea.  Her mummy graciously welcomes the tiger inside their apartment (think London 1968, when this book was first published).  Sandwiches, buns, and tea aren't enough to satisfy the tiger; he goes searching for more food and effectively clears the apartment of anything edible as well as all the water in the tap.  When Sophie's daddy comes home, he takes the news pretty well and has a solution to their lack-of-dinner crisis.

Throughout the story, little Sophie is clearly smitten with the tiger.  The sweet illustrations are a soothing counterpoint to what otherwise might be a rather alarming story of a tiger showing up at one's door and proceeding to eat everything in sight (except the people, thankfully).

We had a great time celebrating the elder lass's fourth birthday with a vintage circus theme (based on the pink-on-the-inside tiger cake she requested).  These books are lasting reminders of that happy occasion. 

good advice

Five-year-old younger lad, dreamer and sage:
"Never hug a charging rhino."

mama duck

We may have put the kabosh on living, breathing furry friends for the time being, but there's no house rule against imagining oneself a critter.  The elder lad was known to declare himself a dog when he was about two or three, and now the two-year-old younger lass has been telling us that she is a duck.   This means, of course, that I am her mama duck.  "I need my mommy duck!" she says, with eyes far more expressive than any duck I've ever seen.  Many times I do in fact feel like a mama duck with my ducklings not necessarily all in a row, so I play along...

city slickers

Maybe someday soon the lads and my beloved will embark upon the fantastic journey that is The Chronicles of Narnia for their bedtime reading, but for now they are reading -- for the most part -- lighter (while still adventurous) fare. The Little House books weren't without suspense, sorrow, or drama, but that was about as much of any of those things the lads are up for at bedtime.

My beloved remembers reading adventure stories of the vintage variety by an author named Troy Nesbit. The Diamond Cave Mystery was my beloved's favorite, so when a search at our local library turned up nothing, I bought a used copy from that purveyor of any and all things (that would be Amazon Marketplace, which is a bit like rifling through untold numbers of garage sales for that which has been cast off but is still of some use to someone else) for Christmas two years ago I found it for him to share with the boys. They ate it up. According to the elder lad, "two boys find diamonds in a cave, and they try to find out who [the diamonds] belong to."

The younger lass is a willing book model, even if she doesn't read the tome herself -- yet.

 Given the younger lad's continuing fascination with horses and cowboys, I was thrilled to find another novel by Nesbit called The Sand Dune Pony. That's the current bedtime read, and from all accounts it's as good as the Diamond Cave Mystery (and not too soon for the younger lad, who had had enough of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books).  In this story a boy catches and "gentles" a wild horse. For these suburban lads who dream of the day they might live on "some land," this book is perfect.

These classic adventures are in the same echelon of heroic stories as the Billy and Blaze books by C. W. Anderson and the Little Tim books by Edward Ardizzone.  As we strive to steer our young squires on the right side of the high road, characters like those in Troy Nesbit novels are welcome passengers.

hit or miss

man your positions...

On our recent Labor Day weekend getaway to my parents' house, my sister introduced the lads to Battleship, the maritime warship game.  They were familiar with Battleship via the Wii, but the younger lad was fascinated with the version that he could hold in his hands and position the ships and pegs just so.  He grew so attached to the game that my dad let the lad bring it home with him.  After Mass on Sunday, the lad set up the consoles to play with his dad and brother, team-style.  Later in the day the consoles became laptop computers for the younger lad and elder lass to pretend they were typing on. The younger lass is our "grease man," able to retrieve pegs that fall into the hinge part of the game console when it's open with her tiny little fingers.

The more I think about it, the game of Battleship and its hit-or-miss song and dance routine are the perfect analogy for daily life with young children.  One minute they're planning something spectacular, the next they're quarreling.  Sometimes there are warning volleys.  Sometimes not.  If only I had a radar screen to steer clear of troubled waters.  At least I have a life jacket.

living dolls

Our newly-minted two-year-old younger lass has long loved baby dolls of all sizes and types. Presently she favors teensy tiny (or "tinsy", as the elder lad used to say) "vintage" Strawberry Shortcake figurines and other diminutive babies, but the doll my great aunt made for me holds pride of place in the girls' room as well as in their arms.

When we read Rebecca Caudill's The Best Loved Doll, all three of us females in the family were smitten. In spite of its considerable length for a picture book, the sweet story held the attention of the three-year-old elder lass as well as her not-so-baby sister. The girl in the story is invited to a party one afternoon with instructions to bring her favorite doll. Prizes will be given to dolls in three categories, any of which the girl could win with one of her many dolls. As she wrestles with which doll to take, she keeps coming back to the doll she loves the most -- but who wouldn't be a contender in any of the prize categories. Knowing this, she takes her best-loved doll anyway.

Barbara McClintock's Dahlia is the charming story of a girl named Charlotte who lives in the early Twentieth century (as in 100 years ago).  She's not a girly girl.  She loves to make mud pies, play in the the dirt with her stuffed bear Bruno, and challenge the neighborhood boys to wagon races.  When her Aunt Edme sends her a frilly-to-the-max doll, Charlotte is less than thrilled.  The tomboyish girl gives the newcomer a stern talking-to about what they do and don't do at her house, then packs up the fragile-looking doll for an initiation into Charlotte and Bruno's rough and tumble ways.  Charlotte takes notice of how good-natured the doll is about all the dirty doings, imagining her smiling through the smudges on her face and snags in her dress.  Charlotte names her Dahlia, like the flowers Charlotte's mother fancies.   When Aunt Edme comes for dinner that night, Charlotte sheepishly shows her Dahlia, who isn't exactly in mint condition.  Aunt Edme's reaction surprises Charlotte, and Dahlia's place in Charlotte's heart is secured.  McClintock's beautiful watercolor illustrations are amazing to pore over.  We also like Adele & Simon and Adele and Simon in America, two stories about a sister and her younger brother. 
 

 

From the vast treasury of Little Golden Books come Little Mommy by Sharon Kane and Doctor Dan the Bandage Man by Helen Gaspard.  In Little Mommy a young girl describes in rhyming verse her days spent caring for her three dolls (named Annabelle, Betsy, and Bonny) and home.  Quite the industrious little girl, she cleans, bakes, teaches the dollies, takes them for walks, has a tea party with her neighbor, cooks dinner, and gets the dollies ready for bed, but not before calling Doctor Dan to come check on Annabelle, who gets sick with "the mumbledy bumps," according to Doctor Dan, but should be alright.

The Doctor Dan in Little Mommy doesn't exactly look like the title character in Doctor Dan the Bandage Man, who has red hair and a caring heart.  After his mother fixes up a scrape he earns in a "big backyard cowboy fight" with his friends, he goes on to bandage up his little sister Carly, her doll "with a rather bad bump on her head," and their father after an injury mowing the lawn with a push mower.  With the patina of prose written in a different era (the far-away fifties), these two sweet stories are perennial favorites of ours.  By the way, aren't Dan's mother's shoes flat out fabulous?  If you run across any like them, please let me know!

Our girls can be pretty girly (depending on the day) and delight in their tea parties, tutus, and dollies, but they're often found playing with Legos, trucks, and tools.  This juxtaposition of dollies and trucks in our house has become part of the usual vista, along with scenes like this one:

Surely Charlotte and Dahlia would approve.

sugar and spice

The baking and frosting of the elder lad's birthday confections were collaborative efforts (though the consumption was every lad for himself).  As fun as that was for both of us, the birthday lad and I, if we had had some helpers like the ones in Who Made This Cake, that would've been infinitely more exciting.

In this charming story written by Chihiro Nakagawa and illustrated by Junji Koyose, tiny construction workers bring in big construction equipment and even a helicopter to bake a birthday cake (in the microwave, oddly), frost it with whipped cream, and festoon it with birthday felicitations.  Does it get much better for a lad who likes to have "cooking camp" in the kitchen with his mama and still has an insatiable interest in trucks and construction vehicles?  The elder lad thinks not.

I've reviewed some of our favorite baking-related and construction-related books before (with a follow-up to the cookie post here), but never one that combined both fascinations.  That virtually guarantees its place among the perennial favorites and a must-read for every birthday celebration.

bath time 4.0

In the name of cleanliness with expediency and all that,
sometimes a tub full of bambini is where it's at.

Alas, this can make for choppy seas
with splishes and splashes and plenty of pleas
to keep the water in the tub.
(Remember when tre' bambini went "rub a dub dub"?)

Now with four small(ish) sets of limbs to get clean
after muddin' and grubbin' and baking projects e'en,
when parents are up for the challenge at hand,
we can hastily dispense with the dirt and sand.

It's no small feat. There are bound to be some antics.
But if Mama (or Daddy) has the right playful 'tude, we can keep from growing frantic.

When billed as a "dog wash" with a tub full of yappers,
the bath magically (or not) concludes with no need for snappers.
(though sometimes there is some goofy singing
especially if the poochies' howlings have Mama's ears ringing)

Or if the bambini balk at the idea of a fresh water rinse,
the image of watering plants helps me to convince
them of the need for such a shower.
This helps bring the proceedings to a close (unless it's happy hour).

If someone is illin' or tensions are high,
a stand-up shower in lieu of a bath comes to mind.

At best the elder siblings can help the youngest one wash
(unless, of course, she is covered in ganache).
To see them helping each other brings joy to my heart,
soon to be followed by a sigh when they utter the word 'f*rt'.

Still, they are bigger and every day more capable.
The elder lad is especially able
to wash and lather
(though he'd rather
conduct science experiments with shampoo and other stuff --
of such explorations he can never get enough).

My brand-new mommy self or single self (or even mother of three self) would never have guessed
that I could bathe four children at once with a modicum of success.

Things don't always go smoothly.  Sometimes I am terse
when there are shennigans or tidal waves or worse.
It can be messy, this business of getting clean,
but here's hoping before-bedtime baths lead to sweet dreams.

If anyone's looking for a gift idea for me,
a bath apron like this one might be just the thing.

I have already disclosed my lack of enthusiasm for poetry,
so why is it that bath time brings out the versifier in me?

their stories

At last week's storytime, the kids in attendance made their own books as part of the "Day of the Child" celebration at the library.  They got to write and illustrate the stories themselves (or dictate the stories to their caregivers, if necessary).

That's what the elder lass did -- dictate to me a story about a cat who plays at the playground with her sister then has a snack and takes a nap.

Clearly, I am not an illustrator of any distinction.

The younger lad's story was, of course, about a robot.  This unnamed robot (not Sammy) dresses up like a dragon and scales some power lines before resting in some grass.

ro.bot book

While I was writing (taking dictation, that is) and illustrating (ahem) the elder lass's tome, the younger lass went to town on some illustrations of her own.  I'm hoping she'll fill in the story eventually.

younger lass's exuberant artwork, much like her personality.  PS: I'm smitten with my new gold tablecloth.

Complete with snacks and more books, it was a festive conclusion to the school year storytime series our friend the talented librarian does so well.  We're looking forward to summer storytimes starting in June.

Inspired by his siblings' creations, the elder lad starting writing a book of his own -- a chapter book, no less.  I'm eager to see where it leads.

"The Tree house" -- a work in progress

In other book-related doings, I've updated a couple of recent book posts, including the follow-up zoo book post and the duck-themed one, with books that came to mind after I'd published the posts and photographs of the books themselves.   I'm always hesitant to assert that I've canvassed the books on a given topic for this very reason.

Whatever shall we do until summer Storytime begins?  Write our own stories, I suppose. I for one will try my hardest not to let our vast quantities of library materials go overdue, which is what usually happens when Storytime is on hiatus and I'm consequently off my routine -- in spite of the safeguards and reminders...

magical ideas

Three year old elder lass asks me as we're driving home from school: "Mama, when I get older, can I have a pink wand?"

me:  "What would you do with it?"

her: "I'd wand [my baby sister] to my room."

me: "Then what?"
her: "I'd play with her."

me: "Play what?"
her: "Horses.  She'd ride in my lap on my horse.  I'd put the wand on her lap."

me: "Like a seat belt?"
her: "Yes."

later that same trip...

Elder lass, looking up from her book: "'B' is for buffalo and for Bonnie, so maybe you should get a buffalo for your birthday."

All this from the usually-reserved girl who described the outfit she meticulously chose for herself today as that of a "rock star."  

I can't make this stuff up.

Epilogue: when she told her daddy that she was a "rock star," he asked her what that meant.  "Is it a person who likes to look at rocks?" he asked her.  "Yes," she declared. 

for the tinkerers I love

We have been all about the 'bots (as in robots) around here lately as we've been celebrating the younger lad's fifth birthday.  Here it is Monday, when I try to write about some of the books that have struck our fancy, so I give you...

Clink by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by Matthew Myers.  Poor Clink is a rusty old broken down robot in a shop full o'bots that are newer, flashier, zippier, and bigger.  Many a child comes in to choose a robot and glosses right over Clink.  Who wants a robot that used to toast bread and sing old fashioned songs?   (Do robots sing?) 

One day a boy comes in looking at the robots, finding none to his liking despite the shopkeeper's slick salesmanship.  Then the boy sees Clink, and something in Clink comes alive (in a robot sort of way) again, awakening the music within him that had long ago fallen silent.  As Clink gets more excited, his rusty old parts fail him and he sort of self-destructs.  That seals the deal for Clink, as the boy came looking for a *project* -- something to tinker with, not something to entertain him.  He finds that in Clink.

The younger lad of course is drawn to all the neat-looking robots of Myers' creation, but what resonates with me is the aspect of tinkering/creating/repurposing/refurbishing what already exists rather than trashing it in favor of something new and shiny.  It's a sort of "green" message, but not in a overt or off-putting way.  As the story ends, we see the boy tinkering with Clink and dreaming up ideas for projects to work on with his dad, which further endears the story to us, as around here the dad likes to tinker in the garage -- often with the lads close by. 

Ms. DiPucchio's most recent book is Crafty Chloe, which is another story of using one's talent and imagination to craft just the right thing. 

Robots are endless possibilities, at least to our younger lad.  They're an ideal outlet for his amazing imagination.  For a book to inspire such creativity, that's a rare find.

high five

 

This. Is. Sammy. 

Sammy. Is. A. Robot.

The. Younger. Lad. Built. Him. With. The. Lad's. Father. Brother. And. Papere. 

(that's robot language -- can you tell?)

We celebrate five years of life with the delightful younger lad, born this day (finally -- after *many* hours of active waiting).  The lad has always been a fun-loving, free-wheeling, highly-imaginative kind of kid.  He's  growing ever more into a considerate, compassionate, and loving boy.  He's a busy guy, with lots to act out from the stories he cooks up in his head, and he has big dreams for what is to come.

May the Lord bless you this day, dear lad, and every day, with an unfailing awareness of both His and our love for you.  We are so glad and grateful you are a part of our family.  You bring such richness, adventure, and warmth to every day.  God has big plans for your life, lad, and we're here to help you discern what those are.

We love you, young squire!

scenes from spring break

 Building a barn for Pet and Patty (yes: of the Little House books we've been reading)... 

note the distressed finish of our coffee table.  People pay good money for such a custom patina.   

We didn't have to.

This is Jessie.  My great Aunt Sally (Papa Jack's sister) made her for me when I was a wee lass.

My younger lass is smitten.

 Elementary electronics via Snap Circuits.  The lads were gleeful each time they launched that spinning red wheel off its axis. 
The band-aid is from an unrelated (and minor) injury.

 Safety first: no long hair in the Snap Circuit area by order of safety marshal younger lad. 

Did I mention several of us have had the stomach flu this week?  (We're on the mend.)  Or that it's been raining buckets?  (not that I'm not grateful for the much-needed rain; it might be the last we get for a while!)

getting organized

School starts this week. Yesterday the elder lad started first grade.  The younger lad starts preschool tomorrow. So long as we weather the adjustment to the earlier wake-up calls, I think we're in for a good year.  I just have to get myself organized.

Along with the new school year has come the influx of handbooks, procedures, forms, and paperwork to be read, completed, signed, returned, filed, and otherwise digested. Then there are the calendars.

Snack duty * Cafeteria lunch menu * Parent volunteer schedule * School year * Birthdays

Instead of posting all the various calendars that come home in plain view, I try to glean the pertinent information from each and put it on my central calendar. Otherwise, it's apt to get overlooked as all the calendars become part of the visual landscape only to be dealt with accordingly when I just can't stand it anymore (or company's coming).

In the past I've tried several different printed calendars, but in the end I've always defaulted to a computer-based calendar and have been using Google calendar for a while.  I'd like to get back to an actual calendar, though, if only as a means of preservation.  Enter this little cutie...

 It's a simple spiral-bound calendar I can tuck in my bag meant really for students but with plenty of space to write on each day to suit my purposes. Along with my Google calendar, I intend to use this paper calendar to keep track of our family doings and developments. Wish me luck.  I've kind-of fallen off that wagon.

I like the tangible aspects of the spiral-bound calendar not only for its aesthetic appeal but also for the example it sets to the bambini -- that of writing down what's important and not relying on technology to the exclusion of everything else. The convenience of being able to access my Google calendar from my phone is huge, though, and makes it my default calendar.  Still, I endeavor to strike the proper balance between technology and posterity.

My strange fixation on calendars is becoming more evident the longer I yammer on about mine.  As for what to do with paperwork that needs my attention and response, I'm still refining my system. Generally I try to respond as quickly as possible when necessary and send it back so it's off my plate, so to speak. If I have to wait to return something, I tend to stick it on the fridge (where it is in danger of becoming, like the calendars, part of the visual landscape). Still, it's my not-so-failproof way to protect it from getting lost in the shuffle or falling victim to my deck-clearing compulsion, which seems to have intensified with each child I have borne. Hmm.

Lots of information comes home from school that I like to hang on to for future reference (including those calendars). Presently I have a three-ring notebook in which I try to file things in as I receive them. This reverse chronological order (i.e. most recent first) system is one I learned as an intern at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and I've applied it to pretty much everything I've tried to organize into notebooks, including children's health records and household paperwork. Things like school handbooks that don't easily lend themselves to being three-hole punched are tucked into a plastic envelope that itself is three-hole punched and held closed with a hook and loop closure.

I have come to realize that not every piece of schoolwork needs to be archived. For the past two years, I have collected the elder lad's work in those plastic zip-up cases that sets of sheets, curtains, or comforters come in. I slide the case under the elder lad's bed. A few times he'd trot out all the work (much to my chagrin, as it usually coincided with happy hour) and play trash truck. It finally dawned on me to have him actually sort through the work he wanted to keep, stash that back in the case, and put the rest in the household recycling sack. (I went through it myself later to save things I thought were "keepers" from the recycling bin fate).

Backpacks and lunch boxes live in a low kitchen cabinet for bambini to stow and retrieve themselves. I try to assemble as much of the next day's packed lunch after dinner is cleaned up so that there is less to fuss about in the morning when all bets are off as to my lucidity and the availability of both my hands for food preparation.  Backpacks are readied for the next day with contents like homework, school library books, things for quiet rest time, and correspondence with the teacher.

We're not to the season yet of having bambini going in opposite directions to activities, which simplifies the family calendar a lot. In trying to hone my organizational skills now, I hope to be well-poised to take on that logistical quagmire as it comes our way.

The real challenges both now and in the future will lie in
*not taking on too much,
*remembering what's most important to us as a family on the path to Heaven, and
*making the organizational system work for us -- not the other way around.

My system is working for me so far, though I know there's always room for improvement...

foley artists

Ours is not a quiet household.  If anything, the baseline decibel level has increased in the last few months.  (The lassies may have something to do with this.)  In a typical day, the garden variety truck zooming, space ship blasting, and animal roaring to which we've grown accustomed co-mingle with the hum of the refrigerator and whir of the washing machine.  

In the movie industry, the people who recreate natural noises to add reality and depth to the soundtrack are known as foley artists.  I know this bit of trivia because I wrote a research paper on the movie production process when I was in high school at the pinnacle of my interest in film scores.  I fancied myself a future composer.  The one composition course I took as part of my music degree in college helped me reconcile with this not being God's path for my life.

Highly imaginative and truck-obsessed though he is, the elder lad hasn't historically been given to making sound effects to accompany his maneuvers.  (This is in keeping with his somewhat reserved nature.)  The younger lad has long been more likely to provide some vrooming, zooming, honking, beeping, and clicking noises to add reality to his generally more energetic play.  (He is, generally speaking, more expressive.)  They both, however, have lately taken to replicating a type of natural sound that is categorically- and stereotypically-speaking universally funny to boys age six (or so) and under.  I'd offer three guesses, but I bet only one is necessary for most people.

I can only imagine highly successful foley artists began their careers in a similar manner, and look at them now.  Their mothers must be so proud.

summer reading

Hot summer afternoons make for excellent reading time (if the bambini are cooperative).  When the stars align, we all pile together to thumb through some pretty picture books.

If the lassies are sleeping (or primed for sleeping), the lads and I work our way through a chapter book.  It helps stave off the requests to turn on the glowing screen when pleas to go outside in the brutal heat are shot down.  We just finished The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden.  The title character named Chester (a country cricket who rode into New York City underneath some sandwiches in a picnic basket) turns out to be graced with the gift of perfect pitch and the ability to remember and perform music of any genre after hearing it once.  This talent soon becomes known, and the cricket (with some help from his friends Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat) is soon the toast of the town from the subway station newsstand in which resides.  Fame isn't what Chester wants, though.

Before that satisfying story we read My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett (illustrated by her mother in law Ruth Chrisman Gannett -- this very easily could get me off an a tangent about having a spouse with the same name as one of your parents.  What's that like?) and will start the next story in that set of three soon.  The rich character and scenery descriptions make it ideal for reading aloud. 

  

The relentless heat is taking its toll on the tempers of certain lads ages four and six, who have been likened by their hapless mother to the tigers in Helen Bannerman's The Story of Little Babaji (illustrated by Fred Marcellino).  Handsome Little Babaji parcels out his beautiful clothes to tigers who threaten to eat him.  Those tigers' respective needs to be the greatest among them force them into a showdown that results in their dissolving into butter that Little Babaji's father Papaji collects and takes home to Mamaji to cook with!  In honor of this story, we recently had pancakes for supper, just like Little Babaji and his parents. 

As usual, the two-year-old lass is happiest thumbing through a stack of books reading to herself and anyone else who wants to listen.  

And despite his protestations whenever I ask him to read to me, the elder lad has been observed reading books to himself, things like the comic-book style series of Lori Mortensen and Jeffrey Thompson including A Day at the Fire Station, Going to the Dentist, and Working on the Farm.  Rumor has it he's even been reading Mary Pope Osborne's The Magic Tree House series with his grandmother on those days she's been hosting "camp" at her house. 

As many times as we stack up the books and get them just-so into the canvas Trader Joes bag imported from Chicago that serves as our library bag, they are shortly thereafter strewn all about with children in various degrees of recline poring over their pages.  And that's okay by me -- especially if it precludes them from chasing each other until they turn into butter like those tigers...

warm fuzzies

Books about rabbits and chicks and springtime are as numerous as, well, rabbits.  But here are some currently causing our noses to twitch in a bunny-like manner:

Marshmallow by Clare Turlay Newberry -- there is something about this Caldecott-award-winning book from 1943 that has me hooked.   Marshmallow is a cute little fluffy white bunny adopted by Miss Tilly, who didn't consult with her tomcat Oliver before bringing the white fluff ball into their cozy apartment.  Funny little poems about rabbits and the obvious parallel of sibling rivalry in furry friend form drive the story with watercolor illustrations in an almost monochromatic scheme that bring an ethereal dimension to the story. Her illustrations have much in common with those of Catherine Rayner's, whose latest book The Bear Who Shared is among those favorites in the present library cache -- even if it's not about rabbits.

Kevin Henkes has authored and illustrated several of our favorite picture books. Little White Rabbit is the latest.  The rabbit imagines himself taking on the characteristics of several things he encounters as he cavorts around the countryside. 

From the Reading Rainbow era we have Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco.  This is another yearly favorite, about a babushka known throughout the Russian countryside for her hand painted Easter eggs of unmatched beauty.  Every year she takes her eggs to the Easter festival in Moscow to be judged in the competition.  She usually wins.  One year she nurses back to health an injured goose.  The goose, named Rechenka by Babushka, accidentally knocks over the basket of fragile eggshells that Babushka has spent the long cold winter painting in preparation for the festival, shattering them all.  By some miracle, Rechenka lays eggs whose shells are decorated with intricate patterns and beautiful colors.  There are enough for Babushka to enter in the festival.  After Babushka leaves for the Festival, Rechenka leaves one more egg before departing herself.

Along with the two books An Egg is Quiet and A Seed is Sleepy, written by Diana Hutts Aston and illustrated by Silvia Long which I reviewed last summer and such classics as Margaret Wise Brown's The Runaway Bunny, these books of a springtime nature are lately party to some moments of warm fuzzies with my own funny bunnies.