Sunday, November 2, 2008

Handy Matt

Attention, cable TV viewers everywhere! The family and I will soon be appearing on a public access channel near you!

This morning my old friend Christina, one of the friendly neighborhood children's librarians over at the Monroe County Public Library, had us helping to film an informercial about early literacy. I got to be a talking head going on about why I take my girls to storytime and how exposure to books benefits them (being pedagogical helps when being interviewed, although the cameraman at one point did ask the boom operator to move the mike further away from me...ahem. I'm used to projecting to a classroom, people!), and then we all participated in some shots for the "B-roll" to go over disembodied voice footage. Matt read a book to Sydney, Will flipped through some books independently, Syd played with a workbench in the playroom, and Christina forced us to all hold musical instruments and sing together as a family because she needed that particular activity for a shot. Knowing that the footage of us would be soundless (um, right?), I belted out this particular Kimya Dawson household favorite:

After that and bicycling all over town, I retired to finish my slog through my freshman comp student papers, and Handy Matt built a dress-up area in the girls' room, with a rod for hanging dress-up outfits, a big mirror for showing off in front of (to be fronted by a ballet barre at some point in the future), some bins and baskets underneath the hanging stuff for other stuff, and plans for hooks for jewelry.
The man can do anything, right? (...except help the Momma put some clothes on the kids and pose like normal people for a family portrait!)
The idea and basic arrangement of this dress-up area is taken from my favorite blogger, SouleMama, and her awesome book,
I find her really inspirational, y'all.

2 comments:

  1. Local celebrities, eh? ;) Very cool!

    I just borrowed that book from the library. Looking forward to perusing it.

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  2. I was a little disappointed in the arrangement of stuff--it seemed a little choppy--but it was also so inspirational. We're also blog readers of SouleMama, so for a while now I've been gradually incorporating some of her ideas into our lives--the nature table and dress-up area, projects like felting rocks and felt birthday crowns. If only I wanted to hang out outside as much as she does, though. I pretty much only like autumn.

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