Archive for the 'Family' Category

September 1, 2010 @ 8:06 pm | Filed under: Books,Family

Look at me, not posting! I’ve written a lot about the trip in my head, if that counts. It’s just: the days are busy. You know how it is. Do any of you know the picture book called Little Bean? We love that book. By John Wallace, I think it was. On full days, I always hear Little Bean in my head: Busy, busy, busy. Busy making smoothies. Busy catching up on Mad Men. Busy sorting through three weeks’ worth of mail. Busy thinking up little jobs for Rilla to do in her quest to earn coins to fatten her piggy bank. Busy learning how to be a soccer mom—Beanie is playing, this year, for the first time, and I am clueless about things like shinguards and cleats. Busy picking up erasers after Huck bit them off all the pencils and spit them out under the table. Busy taking Jane to meetings at church eight days early. Ahem. Not busy enough writing things correctly on my calendar, apparently.

Busy playing with my new Kindle. It truly is even sweller than the previous model. I went for the graphite case, even though I prefer the crisp white. I’d read that the darker frame helps improve the contrast, and I think it does. That, plus whatever else Amazon did to improve the e-ink display. It’s quite a loverly device, I must say. Slim and light and cool in the hand. Easy one-handed reading and page-turning. The annotations feature I like so much. The addictive “sample this” option that lets you read the first chunk of any Kindle book for free. (You can do that on the iPod and phone apps too.)

Last night I read the opening of James Owen’s Here, There Be Dragons, the first volume of the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica. Hooked. It is now winging its way to our library branch along with Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta—another novel with an intriguing opening.

This makes it sound like I am busy reading, but as usual I am really much busier trying to decide what to read next.

Busy, busy, busy.

August 3, 2010 @ 6:32 am | Filed under: Family

Sent at 7:18 AM on Tuesday
Scott:  !
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10847838
“In a scene reminiscent of the film Jaws, home video taken at Seaside Park Beach in the US state of New Jersey shows a shark causing a furor by coming ashore briefly before turning away and returning to open seas.”

Me: I love how the screaming gets loudest when he beaches himself. Like that’s the time to worry!

Scott: Heh.
You never know. He might decide to grow legs.
He could.
He’s a shark.

July 5, 2010 @ 9:10 am | Filed under: Family

Scott took the four girls to see fireworks last night, while I stayed home with my exhausted, early-to-bed boys. It was a peaceful evening for me, and a quick one. The girls tumbled in the door around ten, flushed, starry-eyed, thrilled. “Too wonderful to talk about,” Rose said, which may be a first for our family. Scott had found them a choice spot on a rise at the edge of a golf course, and they stretched out on their backs—no blanket, we don’t think that far ahead—looking at stars until the fireworks started. Scott says Rilla ran and ran and twirled in the dark, and it was magical. She fell asleep on the way home, and he carried her straight to bed. I’d dressed her in soft clothes just in case, so we wouldn’t have to wake her by switching to pajamas.

This morning she padded down the hall toward me, staring in sleepy confusion at her pink sweater and t-shirt.

“I didn’t go to bed?” she asked, or said—it was more a statement than a question, but clearly a statement of fact which she found puzzling.

I’m trying to imagine swimming up toward consciousness and finding myself in my bed, with my sisters still sleeping in theirs, and then noticing my daytime clothes and deciding that meant I hadn’t slept at all. Even when I explained, she was still skeptical.

July 3, 2010 @ 8:27 am | Filed under: Family,These People Crack Me Up

Scooping a few things from Twitter and Facebook for our family archives…

Beanie misreads “tapioca” at the grocery store, cries out in horror: “TILAPIA PUDDING???”

Rose has announced her new favorite snack: vanilla yogurt with red pepper flakes. I feel faint.

Beanie on Roald Dahl: “In a way, he’s kind of mean. He wrote books that are TOO GOOD, so now that I’ve read them all, I’m sad.”

Bowie on iTunes; Scott giving dramatic recitation, from memory, of HAND, HAND, FINGERS, THUMB in Patrick Stewart voice. #morningatmyhouse

A #booksthatchangedmyworld I forgot: Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Mrs. B in 5th grade read it aloud, hooked me on readalouds. (& that book!)

Also, possibly my first encounter with ‘unlikely heroes.’ Those awful Herdmans surprised everyone.

The 9yo asks, “How DO you fall unconscious, anyway?”

Scott is singing “Macho Man” to the baby, who is dancing like the Caddyshack gopher. I’m supposed to tear myself away from that and work??

Really, Amazon? There can’t possibly be anything in my buying history that suggests I would appreciate an email about a sale on Baconnaise.

“What happened to Alf’s girlfriend on Lark Rise” has surpassed “toddler nose blowing” as a top search topic bringing people to my blog.

Remark #905709 I never anticipated needing to make: “Please don’t kick people in your fake sleep.”

How Beanie, my early bird, greeted me this morning: “Mom, I was thinking. If you were in a coma for a lot of years, when you woke up, wouldn’t you be a GIANT? Because you do most of your growing when you are sleeping.”

Rilla is worried. Her sisters told her they are biking to Egypt today. From San Diego.

So at various points in this day I heard the baby referred to by his sisters as a minotaur and a ham. I suppose this is to be expected when his mother refers to him as her little side of beef.

Reeeaaaalllly wish I’d remembered the neighbors can hear outside my bedroom window before I started belting Don’t Cry Out Loud.

Today so far: a little Eliot, a little Plutarch, a little Skye Boat Song. Now watching Beanie fall into FARMER BOY for 1st time. #Ilovethis

Plutarch, by the way? Best kept secret when it comes to adventure tales. Those Romans, sheesh.

Beanie is astounded by FARMER BOY’s assertion that Almanzo & his siblings were not allowed to speak at meals. But she envies him his pie.

9yo: “Mom, I fear you have hooked me on Shakespeare. I keep thinking in quotations.”

Overheard: Rose, in a reproving tone: “Beanie, you’d CARE if you got your legs cut off.”

I could just stand here all day & transcribe. Beanie: “Beware, you creep-faced loon!” Rose:”You have to admire her creativity & desire to die.”

Listening to a Yale Open Course music class on the fugue. Fugue, from Latin fuga, flight: “One voice going ahead, leading ahead; another voice following it.” Yale’s Prof Wright is quite engaging.

Rilla: “When I grow up I want to be a goddess. Because I really want to know what clouds taste like.”

The 11yo just pitched me a six-book historical fiction series. I’m being roped in as research assistant.

A descent into madness and a brutal murder: that’s what I call an afternoon well spent. Love my kids’ Shakespeare Club.

Baby sits on kitchen floor chuckling, dripping water from a bottle onto his bare legs. Grins up at me all proud, like water’s his invention.

Scott has the day off; took big kids bowling. I’m playing dressup with Rilla but she had to pause for a pizza break. Signed, Mrs. Fancylady (mother of, apparently, a baby named Pickle Cheatman)

Rose is working on the last page of a Dover coloring book on dragons. It’s a “dragon questing license.” Wonderboy is driving her crazy by repeatedly grabbing her colored pencils. Laments Rose: “What I really need is a brother-maiming license.”

In the Awesome Baby Tricks department, he has learned to “hit the deck.” We are dying laughing.

Relieved to wake up and find that I did not, in fact, pay Clint Eastwood $1100 for a barrel of flour.

The 11yo says she is loving STARGIRL for its “imaginative, rich writing.” Future book blogger?

Children have constructed zipline for velcro-pawed toy monkey between closet and bunk bed.

The title of this conversation is “Not a Morning Person.” Me: “Good morning!” Rilla: “Mommy, I don’t like when people say that.”

June 24, 2010 @ 6:33 am | Filed under: Books,Family

The cold is passing; has mostly passed. Thanks. I’m cleaning closets and the refrigerator. The Children’s Book still has me in its grip. Last night I didn’t even start thinking about dinner until about ten minutes past dinnertime. I threw together a slapdash meal of the last foodlike substances I could find in the house: some broccoli, some ramen noodles (lightly seasoned, no broth, the world’s cheapest side dish), and thin slices of deli ham fried on the pancake griddle. We had a big laugh, because it turned out to be the tastiest meal we’ve had all week. But then, you can’t go wrong with ramen noodles.

I am going to have to stop making To Be Read lists because they seem to doom the books to limbo. Most of the books named in my summer reading plan are books that appeared on a TBR list here on the blog at some point; all of them are books I actively want to read, or finish reading. I do this meta thing where I talk about wanting to read them but don’t actually, you know, READ them. And then eventually I do.

But anyway, I mention this because the TBR list has swollen again. Phoebe and I read the same James Sturm article at Salon (was it Salon?) and were intrigued by his mention of M. T. Anderson’s novel Feed. I read the first chapter via Kindle-for-iPod’s “sample this” option. Phoebe actually read the whole book, and she recommends it. I’ve got it on hold at the library.

Which is, of course, the reason for my Always TBR, Never R list…the books on that list are books I own. I wind up reading the books I’ve requested from the library, because there’s a time limit on them. Which ought to be a cautionary lesson for me.

My current library stack includes Enchanted Glass (the new Diana Wynne Jones), Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore, two Kathi Appelt novels, another Hope Larson graphic novel, the Guy Appelt book we were talking about here the other day, Shannon Hale’s Calamity Jack, and, of course, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Which titles, along with the Byatt, themselves comprise a pretty fine summer reading list. Not to mention I have a new Lois Lowry (!) and a new Linda Sue Park (!) in my giant pile of review copies.

(Digital review copies, those two, which can only be read on a computer—since I don’t own a Kindle. The Kindle-for-iPod app is no good, here. This is an annoyance. I badly want to read these books, but I loathe the idea of reading a novel on my laptop. Ugh.)

June 23, 2010 @ 6:20 am | Filed under: Family

The Shakespeare Club and choir performances went wonderfully well on Saturday.

On Sunday, every member of this family came down with a raging cold.

Eight people burn through a lot of Kleenex, let me tell you. Small forests have died in service to this virus.

We have stayed home all week, so far. Beanie, who wants to learn Japanese, is watching a lot of GenkiJapan.net. I learned to count to ten in Japanese yesterday, quite by accident.

We also discovered LiveMocha, a language-learning program very much like Rosetta Stone, but free.

I had more to say, I’m pretty sure, but that’s all my pounding head can recall at at the moment. Achoo!

June 17, 2010 @ 6:19 pm | Filed under: Family,These People Crack Me Up

Rilla, who is four years old now, pointed to the garland (made by Lesley) that hangs between our living room and kitchen. “I can read that,” she announced matter-of-factly.

“It says, ‘Please—be—on—this—roof.’”

June 16, 2010 @ 9:05 am | Filed under: Books,Family,Family Adventures

So I’ll remember, and since you asked…

Various interests swirling here:

The orthodontist’s office is holding a contest. The person who comes up with the best name for the betta fish on the counter wins the fish. Rose’s entry: Kalliope. (Get it? A Greek name? Betta sounds like beta, a Greek letter?) She has high hopes of winning. This has spawned (ba dum bum) discussions on odds/probability, subjective vs objective criteria, and breeds of fish. The latter necessitated a library trip yesterday, and this morning I have been regaled with tidbits about various breeds of freshwater aquarium fish.

The orthodontist and his assistant were greatly intrigued by Rose’s account of the middle-grade graphic novel, Smile, Raina Telgemaier’s award-winning account of her personal orthodontic ordeal in junior high. This came up when Dr. G mentioned bonding as the final step in Rose’s treatment plan (two years from now), and Rose volunteered that she had learned all about that in “this really great book I read.” She continued to explain that she had been “terrified about getting braces, but after I read Smile I was reassured.” Dr. G got quite excited and had his assistant write down all the information about the book.

We’ll be spending most of July at Dr. G’s office: two of the girls are getting braces.

So: fish, orthodontia, what else?

Jane is absorbed with practicing for piano guild and Shakespeare Club. (Reminds me: we need to create a human thumb out of Sculpey.) Recent reading has included Dorothy Sayers mysteries; Musashi (a manga series); L. M. Montgomery short stories; a collection of Best American Short Stories; Betsy and the Great World (again); various Caroline Cooney novels; Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Othello, and a bit of Henry IV, with corresponding sections in Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (which we are grateful to Mental Multivitamin for bringing to our attention). Oh, also the book she got for her birthday: A User’s Guide to the Universe.

Jane and I are going to work through Memoria Press’s Classical Rhetoric course together. Readings from: Aristotle’s Rhetoric; Adler’s How to Read a Book; Cochran’s Traditional Logic; and Figures of Speech. We’re going to start in a leisurely way this summer. Both of us are excited. Looks like some excellent discussion fodder.

Scott and Jane have been doing a kind of informal Film Club in the evenings. Recent viewings include: Men in Black, In the Line of Fire, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, A Few Good Men, The Natural, The Sixth Sense.

Bean and Rose spend a lot of time scootering in circles on the back patio, narrating adventures in a long-running fantasy story they play. Then Rose will disappear to the back room to write up the latest chapter on the computer. The subject matter shifts every week or so: sometimes a Warriors-inspired cat saga; lately the dramatic doings of a pair of princesses, one an ancient Egyptian and one Japanese. A set of Dover costume coloring books have provided necessary reference material. Beanie very earnestly desires to learn Japanese. Our library used to have a partnership with Rosetta Stone, but no longer, alas. I’m sure there must be some good resources online, but I haven’t done the homework yet.

Current favorite Wii game: Spectrobes (the older girls); Mario Kart (Wonderboy and Rilla).

I haven’t spent as much time in the back yard as I usually do this time of year. I think it’s because I’m sad about the absence of Monarchs. Everything else is lovely out there, though. A zillion bees (including honeybee and native species). Mourning cloaks, goldfinches, hummingbirds. A profusion of bloom. Jasmine breezes. Tomatoes in abundance. A great many weeds needing my attention.

Wonderboy has a new watch which affords him great delight. If you need to know the exact minute everything happens, every day, every minute, he’s your man.

Rilla lost her pink parkly shoes, we thought. This was high tragedy. Yesterday, oh the joy!, a friend kindly dropped them off—they had been left in her yard at last week’s Shakespeare/choir practice. Of course they had!

This missive just in from Rose:

Mommy, can you send me information and pictures about the Rosy Red Minnow?
Thanks, and love.

Gotta run.

June 11, 2010 @ 8:12 pm | Filed under: Family

Well, I just wrote a post-length comment on yesterday’s post, so I probably don’t have much more to say tonight. (Of course, having said that, I’ll write a novel.)

Today was a good day. One of the things I got to do was direct a couple of very short skits based on Aesop’s fables, to be performed by a small group of six-to-nine-year-old girls after their older siblings’ Shakespeare scenes next weekend. None of the younger-sib boys wanted in. Hee. I had the BEST time working with these girls, none of whom happen to be mine. They dove into the scenes with such zest and commitment. I am absolutely beside myself with eagerness to watch them perform for their parents next weekend.

And I’m so proud of my Shakespeare gang. They have worked really hard, and they are going to rock.

Over Memorial Day weekend, my own family started a group reading of The Tempest. Scott is Prospero; Beanie is Miranda. Jane was extremely sporting about that; she took Ferdinand and I’m the uncle. Rose is reading Ariel. The challenge will be finding time to keep going—we sort of need the younger set to be sleeping, or deeply absorbed in something else, so as to avoid interruptions every thirty seconds. But when Huck naps on weekends, I write. Scott holds that time sacred. And at night, we have this whole other rhythm going. So I don’t know when we’ll get to Act 2. But Act 1 was awesome.

Huck is lying here beside me, asleep, and I’m looking at him and realizing he takes up fully half the width of this king-sized bed. Someone called him “a year and a half” yesterday and I was like: SHUT UP! He’s a BABY! But he’s totally this little man trucking around the house, these days. Throwing all manner of valuables in the trash can. Unspooling the toilet paper. Carrying my Tupperware into the back yard and stepping on it, or sitting in it, or throwing it over the fence.

In other news? I miss LOST.

(But did you hear about this? It’s exactly what I was hoping they would do. Jane and anyone else who isn’t caught up to the series finale, DO NOT CLICK this link.)

June 10, 2010 @ 7:22 pm | Filed under: Family

Our Season of Becky is just beginning. Summertime kicks off with Jane’s birthday—she turned 15 on Monday, and a splendid day it was, even if something did go amiss with my frosting for the Rocky Road Sheet Cake. (Wasn’t enough to cover the cake. Mom, where’d I go wrong?) Scott took the day off work; Jane and I stole away to go shopping, just the two of us—quite a treat! And then came the fun of a visit from Scott’s brother John, who was in town for a convention. And later still, that delicious if unsightly cake. A good day.

Our various activities are winding down for the summer—just a few biggies left to go, most particularly our Shakespeare Club performance of scenes from the Scottish play. Next week will be full of rehearsals. Our group piano classes keep going year-round, but apart from those, our time will be pretty much uncommitted until Comic-Con.

And it’s funny: no sooner had I breathed my usual deep sigh of relief over the End of the Activities than I noticed a certain, erm, restlessness attacking the occupants of this little house in the afternoons. Suddenly, my mental declaration to Park Myself and Go Nowhere seemed a bit, well, mental—especially around 5pm when there are still two long hours to go before Scott gets home. By last week, the kids were starting to get under each other’s skin something fierce. So I’ve been scooping up the three youngest a few evenings a week and heading to the YMCA, where we have a family membership.

I was actually on the verge of canceling the membership—we got it when Rose was taking gymnastics, but around Easter she decided to take a break, and after we paid for May without going one single time the whole month, I figured it was time to bail. But fortunately (as it turns out), you have to actually go there in person to cancel, and I was too lazy to go. (Which is almost certainly their diabolical plan. The people who are not too lazy to go the Y to cancel a membership are probably the kind of people who go to the Y to use their membership. Either way, the membership doesn’t get canceled.)

So last week when the afternoon crazies hit my children, I suddenly remembered: oh RIGHT, we still have that Y membership, and there’s a really nice playroom there. So I took the littles to the playroom, where they are ecstatically happy playing with the nice college girls who work there, and the big kids got a much needed respite at home without small peoples clamoring for their attention and Wii remotes.

And there I was at the Y, with nothing to do. So I went into the gym and got on the treadmill (because why not), and then I found out there’s a free-for-members personal-exercise-program-planning thing, so I signed up for that (because why not), now I have this whole Official Exercise Plan mapped out, which is, if you know me, hilarious. The young personal trainer guy asked me what my “fitness goals” are, and I was like: Um, uh, well….I would like stronger arms. So I can open jars instead of having to wait for my husband to come home from work. So now I have a Fitness Goal of Getting Arm Muscles.

I am hoping to achieve this goal by August, when we will be going to a Big Family Gathering back East. You never know when you will need to impress the in-laws by opening jars.