Thursday, February 20, 2014
A Liberal Trying to Liberate More than the Law Allows
Now that both kids are such voracious readers, I also don't do as thorough of a job checking out their reading material as I used to do--now I mostly skim something or read a page or two of one of their books as I'm picking up after them. The other day, Syd had gotten a bunch of Archie comics from the library, then left them lying around after reading them. As I was picking them up to put them away, I flipped open one of them to check out a random page:
Um.... yeah. Archie comics probably aren't appropriate reading material for the seven-year-old.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Her Bi-Weekly Book Collection
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
But How Do You Feel?
I am still not in love with these gimmicky children's craft activities, despite your resounding assurances of their developmental solidity. But wow, the girlies adore them. Sydney actually wore her plate around her neck for part of the day, and Willow plays with her plate nearly daily, moving the arrow around to the different feelings and then saying, "I'm angry!" in an angry voice or "I'm sad!" in a sad voice, etc.
It does have me rather interested each week, though, in what that week's craft will be, and in what new and specific way it might horrify me. Today my guess is that we'll do something with pipe cleaners, toilet paper tubes, markers, and circle stickers...
Friday, February 5, 2010
Back to the Library
Our bright, expansive, handsome children's department in the public library was closed for THREE ENTIRE MONTHS. Can you believe that? Renovations were apparently necessary but at times, I seriously wondered if I could last that long. I am addicted to requesting, online, large numbers of library materials as I think of them--say, for instance, the little kid has been talking about death a lot, or we're invited to take a trip to Boston this summer--and having them sent to the drive-up, where I can pick them up at my leisure. For the entirety of the renovation, the majority of the children's collection was unavailable. That means NO copies of Lifetimes, my absolute favorite book about death. No Revolutionary War on Wednesday, the book in which tiny Jack and Annie take their Magic Treehouse to war! I nearly expired.
And the beautiful, large playroom! Don't even get me started about how much I missed the playroom. Or the train table. Or the window seats by the board books. Or spending the entire afternoon sitting in comfy chairs working on stuff while the kids browsed or read or played.
I REALLY missed that last one. The happiness of writing for hours, with the kids, without feeling like I'm neglecting them! And we've also gotten out of the house!
My time of trial is over, however, for as of Monday, the children's room is officially open again. Things are spiffier, there is new carpet, the children's DVDs are in a SHOCKINGLY prominent location, but otherwise, things are back to normal. Story time was followed by activity time, world without end amen, and funnily enough, the activity was the exact food coloring, table salt, and ice experiment that's been on trend on the interwebs lately, so I didn't even have to drag out our crap to do it. Of course, we are very little, so we just watched the salt melt through magnifying glasses:
It was like going back home after a long absence, where even though things may be different, you can manage to settle right back in just fine:
The big kid learned to read while the children's room was closed, so I think this homecoming is going to be extra-sweet for her.
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Freebies from the Public Library, or, Your Romance Needs Fulfilled
The bag on the left is all romance novels--50 of them from which my 46 students can choose later this semester, for their final paper that will be a comparison of a gender ideology within their romance novel to a subversion of that ideology in another cultural artifact:
The bag on the right is my stuff--outdated craft books that sometimes have some really interesting projects or methods, cookbooks, travel guides to use in scrapbooking vacations we've been on, and educational materials that might be good to use with the girls:And the girls' shopping cart--that's all their stuff, carefully filled to the maximum allowed capacity. At the book sale there was this other kid, maybe four years old? Now, I don't necessarily offer my own children appropriate supervision, but my kids fortunately don't go get all up in strangers' business when we're out and about, either. So as I'm trying to pick out 50 romance novels, squatting in the middle of an aisle and the girls are "helping" me and I'm trying to read back covers so I can pick out ones that will be useful for my students, this kid comes up and keeps trying to throw books into my paper bag and I'm all, "No, thank you," and he's all trying to move my arm so he can get the book into the bag and I'm all "NO, thank you!" but trying to be nice because he's not my own kid, so I can't yell at him, and where the heck is his parent?
So then he walks over to the girls and starts fighting with them over domination of the cart, and I'm all "It's their special shopping cart, sweetie, but you can have a turn pushing it if you want," and then he shoves Sydney, who shrieks, and starts grabbing their books out of their cart, and I'm all, "NO, sweetie, those are their books!", and then I'm all done, so I tell the girls we are leaving posthaste and the kid STANDS on the girls' cart so they can't push it and I'm carrying two full bags of books and trying to tell this random kid to get OFF and he's ignoring me and I'm wondering if I can maybe just kick him, just a little, but then his parent finally sees him and threatens to whup his ass so we're free to leave, the girls with their ample treasures intact:
If that kid tries it again at the free day of the Red Cross book sale I WILL kick him, because the Red Cross free day is hard-core.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Retro Read-Aloud
I'm a dork, yes, but a happy one.
When two, or even three, of my passions come together into a sort of holy combination, I achieve super-dorkdom, a joy and enthusiasm that my daughters will, one day, put into the memoirs that they will write about their strange childhoods and their crazy Momma. Thus imagine my joy, imagine my enthusiasm, when I learned that the children's department at our public library was selling off its entire collection of VHS and cassette tapes.
VHS tapes? I don't have a VCR. But cassette tapes? I have that player.
We're talking children's music. We're talking audiobooks, both fiction and non-fiction. And because it's the children's department, most of all we're talking picture books and read-aloud cassettes. They're used, so I'm thrifting. They're hella educational. And at 25 cents per item yesterday and 10 cents per item today, they are way dirt-cheap.
It's super-dork heaven.
On Friday, I bought 44 picture books with read-aloud cassettes, 18 audiobooks, and 4 music cassettes. For 35 dollars. Today I went back (of course), and I didn't count my haul, but since Matt was with us and so I could concentrate on shopping (not mediating fights and picking up knocked-down merchandise and shouting across the room for little people to stop running, etc.), I was able to look more at the fiddly fine-printed music cassettes, and I spent 11 dollars.
And look what I got!I'm putting aside all the audiobooks of more than two tapes to bring out for long car trips, stuff like The Mouse and the Motorcycle(and all its sequels), The Secret Garden, The Boxcar Children, Alice in Wonderland, and other awesome stuff. I also might bring these out when the girls are a little older to listen to independently here at home.
But in their collection that they can choose from independently right now are other audiobooks of two hours or less, stuff like Little Bear and Frances and Winnie-the-Pooh collections, and Henry and Mudge, and what seems like eight thousand Hank the Cowdog titles. I hesitated for a second when Willow picked all those out, because she's never read them and I sure don't like Westerns, but then I thought, "Heck, they're 20 cents each," and let her get all of them, and yes, she has proven me wrong by spending two hours this afternoon sitting at the living room table and listening to an entire hard-boiled Hank the Cowdog mystery book, figuring out how to change the sides of the tape and then change to the next tape without my instruction.
I am the happiest, however, or rather I should say THRILLED, about the picture books with accompanying read-aloud cassettes:I'm not sure, but over the two days I think I bought at least sixty of these. And imagine, it was the children's department's ENTIRE collection, so other than the few that the girls chose before they got restless and left me to it, I had my own entire pick of some really premiere titles. And all the cassettes work (a couple that we've tried haven't been of perfect quality, but most have), and all of the picture books are, though well-used, lovingly repaired. Among the titles that I bought are several Dr. Seuss, Where the Wild Things Are, Runaway Bunny, Babar, The Little Red Hen, several fairy tales, and a few books of poems. Considering that nearly all of these, except for a couple that the girls snuck through, are titles that we didn't already have in our print library, it was quite a haul.
The best part, though, has been the girls' reaction to our new wealth of listening opportunities. Sure, I know a lot of it is the novelty of learning how to work my cassette player (now theirs) and choosing from nothing but a billion new books and tapes, but I think this collection really will become an important part of their lifestyle. We encourage reading books and listening to stories and enjoying music, and we sure as hell encourage doing all of this independently, and every now and then for the past two days, when I've walked through the living room and had the chance to witness this:It does make me feel very enthusiastic and joyful, indeed.
Friday, April 17, 2009
You Can Keep What You Can Carry
I'm telling you, we go to the library a lot, and the library book problem here at home is getting pretty desperate. Not only do I have my entire bookshelf just for library books that I only return when I absolutely have to, and then when I do return them I just use another card to request them, but the girls have TWO entire bookshelves just for the library books that they, too, have a hard time returning. Even Matt has a little library book problem, although try and get him to admit it.
Seriously, we went to the library twice this week, and both times we came home with a huge stack of books for the girls. Does everyone do that? Are we the kind of family who thinks everything that we do is normal just because we do it, but then the girls are going to grow up and learn that their childhoods were seriously? Messed. UP.
Anyway, the library program was awesome, and not just because our favorite librarian, my dear friend Mrs. Christina, was in charge (she and I were talking about this, like, truck porn you can get for little kids who are into cars and trucks and heavy machinery--it's hour-long videos with just these shots of trucks, you know, and zooming in on the headlights and the wheel wells and watching them spin their tires in the mud, real fetish stuff, but you're not supposed to call kid obsessions fetishes, please remember that).
No, the program was awesome because of all the fabric paint! Tubes and tubes of it, in color after color, the kind you brush with brushes and the kind you squeeze from the tubes directly onto the fabric and TWO kinds of fabric markers! We get there and get our totes, and all the other kids are kind of hanging back like they don't know what to do or they're scared to draw on their tote bag, but my kids are all, "Hell, YEAH!" and in they dive:
I'm not kidding, y'all. It may be hard to notice in this photo, but I'd like to point out that in it, Syd is painting with a brush--in each hand:
We were the first ones there and the last ones to leave. Christina actually had to give Will an old shirt of her own kid's because I couldn't take Will to school looking the way she ended up, in her thrifted Gap velour dress, no less (I'm sure the program notes read "dress to mess," but I forgot to read the program notes).
The cost of mess, though--look at those bags!
How many books do you think will fit in each one? Ten? Fifteen?
Forty?
P.S. Check out my cloth diapering class tomorrow from 2:00-4:00 at Barefoot Herbs + Barefoot Kids--new location!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
We Love Books. We Also Like Them to be Free.
With my two little girlies also scoring free books, with their own perfectly-sized real metal shopping cart (I once had to scream at a lady ACROSS A WAREHOUSE to stop stealing some of the free crap from my kids' shopping cart while Willow stood there right in front of her and cried--some people will do anything for a creepy vintage doll), I, as a rule, never get to look for my own reading material, but I did manage to grab several awesome 80s Christmas crafting books, a whole wheat cookbook, and some California travel guides for cutting up for scrapbook embellishments.
The girls, too, got lots of awesome-to-them stuff--books about Botswana, the digestive system, the making of the 80s-era Ramona the Pest TV show, etc.--and I usually respect their haul, but this one I had to take away when they weren't around:Really?I mean, really?
The worst thing is that it totally makes me want a cigarette right now. Seriously--the picture of the smoking cat makes me want a cigarette.
My week is turning out to be a little stressful.
P.S. Check out my tutorial for making scrapbook embellishments from comic books over at Crafting a Green World.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Sunday Update
I've now used up the last of my pre-cut glass stash, though, and I find cutting glass with a hand tool VERY tricky. I believe I'm in the market for a second-hand glass grinder.
I think it's a total rip that stockings are for kids, so in our house we also do stockings for everyone, and so Matt helped me design a pattern (he drew, I nitpicked) for some stockings to sew out of felted wool. Here are three blocked and drying:
The living room table, so recently moved (by me, with the back injury) to the lovely spot with the natural light by the window, was briefly shoved into a corner (by me, with the back injury) because Matt was being a dick about it, but my ability to throw a really big hissy fit (it's the redneck in me) with little to no warning fortunately trumped Matt's shove-everything-against-the-wall design ethic, and the table was moved back (by me, with the back injury) into the sweet spot a couple of hours later.
I drew a pattern for the perfect pair of T-shirt panties today, only, T-shirt material isn't as stretchy as regular panty material, and you may not realize this when you put your panties on every day, but your panties stretch a LOT to accomodate your body, and all this is a preface to the fact that I need to tell you that the panties I make for myself out of T-shirts are ENORMOUS. Seriously, they're huge. Looking at them, they make you kinda feel like crying, but ooh, they are comfy.
So I cut out a ton for myself, and they are ENORMOUS, and Willow wanted some, too, and she wanted them to be "matches" with Momma, so Matt used his graphic design skills to cut down my pattern to fit her. The style is a little more adult than I'd choose for her--a little hipster, slightly cheeky--but seriously, something about the idea of wearing matching panties with my four-year-old...I could not resist. Here's the stack of Will's all cut out:
So yeah, our Sundays tend to be ridiculous. I'm exhausted, but you know what? Matt cleaned out the refrigerator today, and we totally have an unopened bottle of cheap champagne back in there.
I'm gonna go get it.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Handy Matt
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.
I find her really inspirational, y'all.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Back on the Grid, Free Stuff Included
Wait, that's the cat. MOVE!!!Ah, here we go! The girls' shopping cart (which they took into the sale because they are just that awesome) and the stack next to it are all romance novels for my students--I'll make them take one and read it and write a paper analyzing it when we study the romance genre later this semester (right now we're on Star Wars--I just tonight had to break it to them that Luke Skywalker was a member of a terrorist organization attempting to overthrow a ruling government. Yes, friends, blowing up the Death Star was an act of terrorism). The romance novels range from the 1940s old-school Harlequins with the duchess who falls in love with the brutal yet passionate czar to the contemporary ones that all seem to revolve around a single woman looking for a father figure for her adorable yet troubled child. Weird.
The girls picked clean the children's area (they got all the awesome geography picture books that nobody wanted to pay for--Tasmania, and Eastern Bloc, and My Mommy was Born in Germany) and then ransacked the young adult shelves for all kinds of inappropriate titles, but I bribed them into letting me sort through their collection and take out the teen heartbreakers by offering them a set of animal encyclopedias, so now we're flush on good animal pictures to cut out and do stuff with.
I got a couple of books to read for real, but mediating my kiddos requires so much energy that I really didn't have time to give the sale a good go-through just for me, so mostly I just grabbed all the halfway-decent crafting books that I saw. I got Needlepoint: The Art of Canvas Embroidery, which I'm not that excited about except that it does have some construction patterns for canvas containers; Better Homes and Gardens Gifts to Make Yourself, which has instructions for making those big cardboard puzzles that little kids like; Sewing The New Classics: Clothes With Easy Style, whose clothes are mostly baggy and ugly but from which I think I can figure out how to make jammy pants; Have a Natural Christmas 1980, from which I am totally going to make some pomanders; and , which has a pattern for bell bottoms(!).
Yep, it took me three trips to the car to drop all this stuff off, while the girls sat on a bench on the sidewalk and spilled chocolate soymilk on themselves (from Bloomington Bagels--don't get me started on how much I hate taking my kids to a restaurant by ourselves, but we were off the grid, and we had to eat!), and then I got yelled at by some guy who'd apparently been waiting on me to leave in my car so he could take my space, but I'm sorry, it's not my job to watch my kids and where I'm going and figure out what the people in other cars are doing, too, and then we went back into the playroom and the girls played while I utilized the library's electricity and wi-fi to write my lesson plans and grade my online homework submissions, and then we left the library, and I was yelled at AGAIN by some woman who got out of her car to come over and ask me if I was leaving my spot because I put one kid in her carseat, then the other kid in her carseat, then got in the car, then got each kid a book, then a different book, then got one kid a snack, then called Matt on the cellphone to see if he knew if the power was back on at home or if I should drive the kids to a restaurant--again, not my job to leave a parking spot as quickly as possible so someone else can have it. Have I ever mentioned that I LOOOOOVE to bike to the library with the girls? Weather willing, that's what we'll be doing again tomorrow morning, because come rain or come shine, storytime comes every Tuesday morning.
When is your storytime?
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Felted Wool Cupcakes--I'm Obsessed!
- Cut the cupcake wrapper at an angle so that the bottom comes out narrower than the top, since real cupcake wrappers look like that, not straight cylinders.
- If you're making these for kids, skip the part in the instructions that asks you to glue the bottom of the cupcake wrapper on. It's not noticeable, and obviously much sturdier, if you hand-stitch it.
- If you're making these for kids, also forget the part where you stick pretty straight pins into the frosting as decoration--seriously, no. I'm thinking about stitching beads on for the same effect.
And, of course, here's the action shot, in which you can see my lovingly crafted felted wool cupcakes at play: