As American as shepherd's pie

So, the new Superman is British. As is the new Spider-Man. And Christian Bale, aka Batman, was born in Wales. Who knew?

Is this revenge for casting an American actress as Elizabeth Bennett?

Adventures in dentistry

We've had a toothsome week at our house. Faith lost her 6th baby tooth on Wednesday. It had been very, very loose for a very, very long time, but she doesn't like to wiggle them. So instead, she got kicked in the mouth by a girl in the McDonald's Play Place, and that knocked it out. I was effusively grateful, as she had a dentist appointment today. We almost had to shell out eighty bucks for the dentist to pull her last loose tooth, as the permanent tooth was coming in behind it and would have been pushed out of alignment. Fortunately, she hit her mouth on the edge of a cardboard box she was playing in and saved us from having to pay for that one.

The tooth fairy at our house brings her a book and a dollar for each tooth. The first tooth she lost, she only got a book for, but Tommy felt that the traditional monetary tribute should be upheld so the next book came with a dollar bill. Faith was confused. "What am I going to do with a dollar?" she wanted to know.

So, as I said, today was a dentist appointment for both children. I write the appointments on Faith's calendar when I make them so she can anticipate them. Seriously, she gets very excited, like birthday-party excited: "I can't wait for tomorrow! I get to go to the dentist!" She informed me quietly last night that she wouldn't tell Eric about the upcoming dentist appointment "because then he'd want to go right now, and it's not until tomorrow." They might be changelings. When I was little, my mother didn't tell me about dentist appointments until the morning of, so it wouldn't ruin more than just the one day, with the tears and the nausea and the begging not to go. My pediatric dentist had a two-level wooden play structure in his waiting area, and one time I climbed up on the top and refused to come down when they called my name to go back. I thought if I waited long enough, I'd miss my appointment. Eventually, I realized I'd have to come down sometime and got more scared of what my mom would do to me than what the dentist would. (Sorry for the public embarrassment, mom! Good times, right?)

It's an excellent pediatric dentistry practice, I must admit. All the hygienists know how to make balloon animals, and you get one of those and a prize at every visit. If you have to have fillings, they give you extra prizes. Eric had to have fillings last time around, and I thought the dentist and I should have gotten prizes. He screamed and cried the entire time they were working in his mouth. We even paid extra and got there an hour earlier for a sedative that was supposed to make him sleepy and more docile. I think it just made him crankier. Faith had to have fillings a few years ago, and even without an extra sedative, she actually fell asleep in the chair while they were filling her teeth. They had to wake her up from her nap when they were done.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part Four

Daycamp was in June. July brought Museum School for Faith. She took a class on dinosaurs and got to bring home a real fossil-in-a-rock on her last day. These pictures were taken throughout the week with some of the reptilian landscaping around the Museum of Science and History.

Fun with George

Do not try this at home -- or with any other cat! George is the most laid-back cat I've ever known. He does get a little annoyed at the end of this video, but that's because Tommy spun him before I got the camera and told him to get him to lie down and do it again.

A modest proposal

My parents' cat Calico has developed a neurotic habit of over-grooming, pulling out tufts of fur and leaving her skin raw and bleeding. The vet can recommend nothing simpler than giving her a daily Prozac, a task my parents wish to take on neither logisitically nor economically. Eric has a simpler situation: "Mawmaw, just get a new cat."

Just another manic Monday

Mondays are our longest days: writing, spelling and grammar for Faith, stories and poetry for both of them, plus Monday is grocery day. We didn't get around to "How Turtles Got Their Shells" and Robert Louis Stevenson today, honestly, before I had to start dinner (and then there was a new "Chuck" and a new "Castle" tonight). They've been shunted onto Wednesday, which is usually our shortest day: music and art. Literature is an art, anyway, right?

Excuses, excuses

I was going to put up a picture Eric drew on art day this week -- it would have been very cultural, after the style of the abstact art of Joan Miro -- but my nearly-9-year-old flatbed scanner has quit working. That, of course, gives me the excuse to order a new all-in-one printer. Imagine: it's 2011, and at long last, color printing comes to my household! (And you thought I was a Luddite for not being on Facebook!) So, until it arrives and I get it set up and talking to the network, I'm off the blog-post hook today. (What, you thought I was going to come up with a new idea on short notice, when I can get by with just posting my excuse?) Hurray for the weekend and two days for the kids to do something cute and/or interesting to blog about!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part Three

I said earlier that Faith got a summer vaction from homeschool due to Tommy's injury, but that isn't entirely true. After he had recovered enough from surgery for us to get into a routine-away-from-our-routine, we did an intensive summer session on addition and subtraction, which were murder for her to master. I tried all sorts of methods to make it make sense to her -- units and rods, number lines -- but she still didn't grasp anything beyond counting on her fingers with every equation. We spent the summer learning "tricks" from Two Plus Two Is Not Five, which has finally rendered her capable of going through a whole set of flashcards with only one or two mistakes when she forgets a trick. Even I can now remember that 5+7=12, which I always had to stop and think about before. (The Number-in-the-Middle trick, if you're wondering.)

In addition to our math escapades, I also used Faith's week of daycamp in June to begin teaching Eric how to read. I used the same book I used with Faith 3 years earlier, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It's an effective method, but I certainly wouldn't call them "easy," on either pupil or teacher. You start out learning the sounds "m" and "s" and end up with the child reading a page-and-a-half-long story a day, with no pictures. Getting to see the picture is the reward your child gets for reading that whole thing through twice. (The second time through, he has to answer questions for reaading comprehension.) I don't know what the reward for the parent is for having to sit through the story being read at a snail's pace twice, other than the sense of celebration and relief when your youngest finishes the book and you realize you never have to go through that ordeal again.

Tedious, yes, but, as I said, it works. When your child completes the lessons, it gives a list of beginning-reader books to move on to, virtually all of which have less text and a heck of a lot more pictures than the stories he's been struggling through. That's the moment of pay-off, when the child finds that all the work he's been doing doesn't just qualify him to read the textbook stories but any of his favorite books as well. The picture below is Eric's "Helen Keller" moment in early November, when he realized that his lessons had enabled him to pick up a book and read. He ran to his room to get Green Eggs and Ham, sat down on the couch, and began to read it, all on his own.

Plenty of fish in the sea

Wednesday is music & art day at our house, and Faith has been learning about musical notation and the nuts and bolts of songs. Today we covered the musical scale and learned the Doe, a Deer song.


I told her the song came from a movie, so she sat down to watch The Sound of Music this afternoon. When we got to the scene where Captain Von Trapp and the Baroness break their engagement, I had to explain to her what was happening: I told her that the Captain didn't want to marry her anymore. Faith said, "Oh, well, she can marry someone else, can't she? There's lots of men."

Edging in before midnight!

The resolution won't be broken today, by golly, even if I'm just uploading a photo of Eric in his new winter hat. That's an adult size hat, by the way. Neither one of my kids can wear child's size headgear. The Santa hats in the pics I sent out with our Christmas cards are Adult Mediums. Even Adult Smalls won't fit! Makes it hard to find sunglasses for them, too.

Spoilers for tonight's "Chuck"!

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Seriously, I'm going to totally give away the ending, so if you haven't seen it yet and intend to, go elsewhere....

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So, at the end of tonight's "Chuck," the titular spy/nerd was in the midst of proposing to Sarah, when they were interrupted by CIA agents arresting her for treason. Later, Chuck was determined to finish his question, even if it was in a holding cell rather than the Loire Valley, when Sarah told him she was voluntarily leaving to go undercover in the Big Bad guy's organization. Their tearful goodbye kiss was followed with Chuck sadly snapping shut the lid of his ring box.

Tommy and I, hardened TV veterans that we are, were not at all taken aback by this turn of events. We've been around the block enough to know that any real proposals will take place during the season finale (or episode 13, in this particular instance, since the original season order was for 13 episodes and was later expanded to 24 -- Ta da! Instant double-climax story arc!). As I turned off the TV before we had to watch the first moments of "The Cape," however, we heard sniffles between us on the couch. Faith had tears running down her face because Chuck and Sarah were being separated. We had to explain to her that everything will be fine by episode thirteen.

It reminded me of a time when she was three and we had just bought Curious George for her for Christmas. (Oh, I'm going to spoil that movie, too: be warned.) We put it in for her to watch in the bedroom while we went about our business. After about an hour, she came out crying hysterically. We calmed her down enough for her to gasp out, in answer to our questions what was wrong, that they were taking the monkey away. (In the movie, the Man with the Yellow Hat decides to send the trouble-making George back to Africa before almost immediately coming to his senses and deciding he wants to keep him.) Anyone who had ever seen a movie before would know that this was just a big set-up for an exciting chase after the ship and touching reunion; to Faith, it was the end of the world. By promising her that the monkey would be back with the Man in the Yellow Hat very soon and everything would end happily, I got her to continue watching. What must it be like to not know that a children's animated feature will have a happy ending!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part Two

Despite Tommy being off work, the summer, with its various activities, must go on! Faith goes against common practice by taking swim lessons in the fall, winter and spring and taking a break from them during the summer, when they're more crowded and there are plenty of other opportunities to compete for her time. Her first diversion of the summer was a week of day camp. Although it met at our church, it was run by a national organization which trucks counselors and supplies from site to site for a week each. As seen here, one of her classes was Painting. (I never did get all the paint off of that shirt and pair of shorts.) Another was Gymnastics, which featured an exhibition for parents on family day. Faith won a genuine plastic gold medal for her participation!

Making chocolate cake out of yellow cake

My mom's birthday was last Friday, and I wasn't on the ball enough to give any forethought to making her a cake. The only cake mix I had in the pantry was a butter-recipe yellow, and I wasn't really in the mood for yellow cake. So I sifted in one-quarter cup unsweetened cocoa and then, after mixing according to the box instructions, stirred in one-half cup mini chocolate chips. I finished it off with chocolate frosting and sprinkles (because, according to Faith, all cakes have to have frosting and sprinkles), but I think it would have been excellent with just a dusting of powdered sugar; the frosting took it over the edge into way too sweet. The flavor of the cake was very good, though -- less overpowering than a straight chocolate cake mix would have been. If I make it again, I'll leave off the frosting and probably dust the Bundt pan with cocoa instead of flour.

Good news doesn't sell papers?

God bless all these people.

One of these days, Alice...

The house cleaners come every fourth Wednesday, so tonight's my night to run around wildly, getting rid of the stacks of magazines and mail that gather over the course of the month so that they can access the surfaces they are hired to clean. My two prime last-minute dumping grounds are the garage and the guest bedroom.

When my parents still lived out of state, the guest room got fairly regular use, and I was forced to keep it tidy; at least, it never got more than a few months' worth of detritus piled in it. After the move, however, I had no good reason not to use it as a storehouse for everything that I couldn't find a place for anywhere else. In addition, my parents brought down some boxes of my stuff from their old house, some of which now reside in the guest bedroom as well. Add to that the day last spring I snapped over the way Eric would just dump out his boxes and bins of toys all over his room, took every single toy out, and threw them all in the guest room, and there's just about enough floor space left in there to set one foot as you lean in and throw more onto the pile.

Needless to say, I've taken to just locking it on the days the cleaners come. One day, Tommy told me, "You know, we really should clean out that room one of these days." I told him I'd put it on my bucket list.

Do not taunt the medication

We were watching Castle tonight (a show we watch due to the presence of Nathan "Mal Reynolds" Fillion) and were treated to ads for two different antidepressants. Apart from the amusement factor of the long list of "Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball" disclaimers, one has to wonder about the demographics of the show's audience if they're in such need of medication....

Just before the deadline...

Well, my first week of daily blog updates is complete with this photo of Faith & Eric wearing the new sweaters they got for Christmas, being posted just 15 minutes before midnight. (Eric's has a "hoodie," which he's very excited about.)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part One

Well, so here's our main event for 2010. Tommy had been playing basketball on occasional Saturdays for more than a decade. Back in 2006, he came down wrong from a jump and partially tore the ACL in his right knee. He had to take a few weeks off from work but was able to rehab it with therapy and avoid surgery. This April ... not so much. He hurt the same knee, completing the ACL tear and also tearing the meniscus, and this time had to have it surgically repaired.

So he was off work and home with us from the end of April until the end of August. Faith, who doesn't normally have a summer vacation from homeschool, did this year, and I got way behind on my reading. Not that we didn't have a pretty good time, all staying home together, despite the crutches and therapy and doctor's appointments, but it was a definite break from routine. More to come, on the kids' activities this summer.

(The family photo was taken at church Easter Sunday, a few weeks before Tommy's injury.)

The Perils of Pickwick

My list of books read for the last several years has averaged around 27 to 28 titles. In 2010, it totaled only seventeen (although I reached that number in only three and a half months), due largely to an event which threw off all activities in our household for 4 months (that series of "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" posts is still coming up!) but due also to the nature of the 18th book I started to read.

Ah, The Pickwick Papers. How could a book so thoroughly enjoyed by Laurie and the March girls be so off-putting to me? It's the story that made Charles Dickens an overnight success, hugely popular in its day, supposedly uproariously comedic -- and yet it leaves me cold. Even the most cliche-ridden, formulaic, tear-jerking Dickens gets to me, but this comedy just seems like a 19th-century "Dumb and Dumber." There is no depth to the characters; they are mere buffoons to be laughed at. Well, I'm only several chapters in, and I understand that Dickens adjusted as he went along. (It was written as a serial.) I'll have to hope that it gets better, as I still intend to finish it when I get the chance. It doesn't tempt me much, though, so it continues to sit on my reading shelf.

It's actually been since last April that I picked up a book to read, but I have no dearth of reading material. I fell behind on my magazines, as well, and have a slidey stack to work through. I finally got caught up on all my bi-weeklies and monthlies and am now starting on the bi-monthlies, beginning back with September/October issues. (I pile them by frequency of their publication, as the most frequent are both the most likely to get out-of-date and the quickest to get through. Magazines which publish 6 times a year or less are by definition less timely).

As far as Faith's reading, she will have finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle by the end of this week (which seems to be available at Amazon only in the boxed set or a Spanish translation). She reads a chapter a day on weekdays and is a big fan of Roald Dahl, who favors short chapters. (Those in Fantastic Mr. Fox are only a page or two long!) She is working her way through the Klickitat Street books by Beverly Cleary, but we haven't found any book that she's enjoyed as much as The Boxcar Children, which she tore through in a single day! Even the sequels to that book haven't spawned as much enthusiasm -- which is congruent with my own experience reading them as a child. The sequels, even those by Gertrude Chandler Warner and omitting the Sweet-Valley-High-ification of the series set in the present day, were written many years after the original and just don't recapture the lightning in the bottle that the first book achieved. She enjoyed Betsy-Tacy, which I despised as a child for the sheer nothing that happened in it, but she's not excited about attempting the next book in the series, Betsy-Tacy and Tib.

This year's entry in the "My Kids Look Exactly Alike" contest

High-resolution

One of my original New Year's resolutions was to drop a line in the blog every day. Seeing as I've already blown that, however, due to post-holiday exhaustion, I've revised it to trying to drop a line in the blog every weekday, not that I'm any less busy then, but my time feels more my own than when I have a husband around to entertain.

Eric has discovered the power of the written word. He got one of the last Glo-Doodles in the area for Christmas and has taken to "writing" lines of scribbles on it and then "reading" it out: "Faith... is... going... to... eat... five... yucky... bugs." Then, when she protests, he retorts in an aggrieved, don't-shoot-the-messenger tone, "Well, it says right here!"