More Reading, Writing

I think this is someone in a boat on the water. Maybe there was more of a story behind this but I can't recall. I wish I could post the picture she made of "The Dentist," but it's on black construction paper and I can barely see it, let alone photograph it.

Wee Round-up

1) Today's Cautious Kids: This morning I read Rosie my fortune from last night's fortune cookie, which said "Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows." To which she promptly replied, "If you keep your face to the sun you will get a sunburn."

2) Last Night's Chocoholic: As we were getting ready for bed, she said, "Hey! "Her" and "She" are words that mean the same thing. But they also mean something different when you put them together. Her-shey kiss!"

3) Forgot to report: Sylvia rolled over last week, May 4. Wait, how was May 4 already last week? May, you are fast.

4) Both babies are spending a fair amount of time contemplating their left hand. When they do it in unison it looks like I've administered something druggy.

5) Best of all, we had a wonderful visit last week from Uncle Scott and Aunt Karen, who were tourists by day and baby handlers by night. And Mom, of course, who didn't do anything touristy at all. She helped do buckets of laundry here and worked to get their apartment upstairs (best tenants ever) sorted out.

6) R is obsessed of late with poison ivy. Frightened, a bit, and fascinated. After spending recent weeks blithely saying that we live in a city and so there's really no poison ivy, I looked up a picture to show her. Lo and behold, the massive 8 foot tall plant growing on the chain link fence in between the playground and the preschool on our block is - yes, you've guessed it - poison ivy. Also, as Grandma Nancy pointed out, there is a much smaller sprig in our front yard. I will be weeding that out this weekend.

  

Rosie and one of the many Tom Otterness sculptures around town. 

Little ladies:

Bigger, exotic lady who stopped by:

NOT smiling, totally unamused by photo shoot:

  

Granddad!

Love this picture. It also makes me realize we need to spend more time photographing all of our 4 Super Grands.

Reading, Writing, and Plutification

As spring flings itself back and forth between record highs and unusually cold stretches, we have been working out our new family rhythm. The logistics of leaving the house with both babies means that we only do it once a day or so right now. Not that it's impossible or anything, but it takes long enough to get out the door that we do have to do it with some forethought, maneuvering around feeding schedules and whatnot. This, to put it bluntly, kind of sucks for a 4 year old. Thanks to (seriously, really truly thanks to) the incredible help of all 4 grandparents, we have more flexibility for one on one time with Rosemary, who continues to grow and change and crack us up.

Among the biggest changes in the past few months is her interest in writing letters. She loves writing her name just about any place she can and also adores writing notes by sounding out the words and letters. (So far this hasn't translated to an interest in reading yet, which I think she gauges to be a tremendous hassle, but when she's in a patient mind set she's totally capable of sounding out words.) She has written notes to many of you, although usually afterwards she will fold the note into half-quarter-eighth-sixteenths and finally tiny 32nds and then sock it away in an already junk-filled handbag and "put it away" somewhere in her room, making it all but impossible to send them off in the mail.   

Or perhaps she cut your note up into tiny shreds, another favorite pastime.

 

Recently we checked out a kids picture book biography of Helen Keller from the library. We read it again and again, and spent awhile discussing the relationship between the concept of water (pumped onto Helen K's hands by Annie Sullivan) and the physical water itself, language, and all that. Rosemary humored me for awhile and then allowed as how the REAL reason she liked the book was the page that said Helen was a mischievous kid who once cut off all her friend's hair as a prank. R thought this was hilarious. The picture showed Helen K wielding a gigantic pair of scissors toward a little girl who looked (quite reasonably) very, very afraid. 

We've also been reading occasional chapters from Pippi Longstocking, who is great fun and also deliciously mischievous. Frankly she seems the more likely candidate for cutting off a friends hair, although I seem to recall she turns up with a gun at some point in the book - stronger stuff than a pair of scissors. Well, we will take that as it comes. I've been enjoying re-reading it after all these years.  I love that her silliness is linguistically inventive - she calls multiplication "plutification" - and that she is sweetly insubordinate and utterly kind. 

And math! It's interesting to me to see the light bulb go off with as she gets the difference between addition and subtraction, moving from working things out on her fingers toward being able to do it in her head. 

  

Big Night

It's been a fun big week of firsts for R: first time mailing a letter all on her own (she's just tall enough), first time zipping up her own sleep sack (yes, she still sleeps in one. It's cozy! But it's got a complicated upside down zipper that starts right under the chin), and best of all...FIRST SLEEPOVER at a friend's house! With her friend M, pictured below but conveniently obscured by a giant, rainbow-sprinkly soft serve for internet privacy purposes.

 

This wasn't R's first night away from us: we are lucky and grateful to have Max and Jerry nearby, and they have had her stay with them overnight a few times; it's always exciting for R and relaxing for us. But this occasion felt a bit different since it involves being comfortable enough with a friend and friend's parents to last all night long. As I recall from my sleepover days, 10pm at someone else's house is like a kid version of a trip to a foreign country.

So many, many times over the past few years (being on the parenting end of the parent/child relationship), I realize a whole fresh perspective on some staple of childhood. I understand dessert as a useful tool. I understand how passionately no parent really wants their kid to get to the dreaded number (as in "I'm going to count to 3 and you need to get start getting your shoes on), since whatever is on the other side of that number - no play date, no TV show, etc - is as big a drag for the parent as it is for the kid. Bigger probably. And now I understand the miracle of the sleepover. A quiet (or quieter, at least) night, knowing that R is having a fabulous time devouring pizza and pancake breakfasts and giggling into the wee hours with unlimited potty talk. I think the phrase win-win must have been created to describe sleepovers.