Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Home improvement
Madison, Christmas. Henry spent hours refurbishing his cardboard house.
And check out Ann & Roger's amazing new kitchen!
And check out Ann & Roger's amazing new kitchen!
Christmas in Madison
What is worth blogging about? (I have plenty of time to think about this right now since Esti has some kind of stomach bug, "crummies in her tummy" as she puts it (cf. the Lorax) - she's asleep in our bed right now, in her third pajama in two hours. And my next class isn't for five hours - which is good, because I stayed home with her yesterday and she didn't nap so I couldn't prepare.) What follows is hardly current events anymore, but anyway, with apologies for delay, here are some pix.
Did I mention Esti is a tiny bit into dollies?
She found this one in Ann's attic - it had belonged to Ann's mom. (Everyone was happy to play along for a while.)
She got a couple more for Christmas. (Apparently Ken had shared the pathetic story of how Esti had made herself a "baby" in Cairo, i.e. a ball of Playdoh wrapped with a rubber band, and taken it to the Irish School -- where her tactful teachers had shaped it into something more recognizably anthropomorphic. We brought it back from Cairo, in fact.)
Matching pajamas for Dolly and Esti.
Fantastic Four comix for Henry - I just started reading it with him tonight (having never heard of it before), and it is SO amazingly nuclear-obsessed, so Cold War in its context. (Invisible Girl: "But we have to take the risk: do you want the Commies to get there first?" Henry: "Mommy, what are commies?")
And so it goes.
Did I mention Esti is a tiny bit into dollies?
She found this one in Ann's attic - it had belonged to Ann's mom. (Everyone was happy to play along for a while.)
She got a couple more for Christmas. (Apparently Ken had shared the pathetic story of how Esti had made herself a "baby" in Cairo, i.e. a ball of Playdoh wrapped with a rubber band, and taken it to the Irish School -- where her tactful teachers had shaped it into something more recognizably anthropomorphic. We brought it back from Cairo, in fact.)
Matching pajamas for Dolly and Esti.
Fantastic Four comix for Henry - I just started reading it with him tonight (having never heard of it before), and it is SO amazingly nuclear-obsessed, so Cold War in its context. (Invisible Girl: "But we have to take the risk: do you want the Commies to get there first?" Henry: "Mommy, what are commies?")
And so it goes.
Math circle
From one February Saturday in Andover. These are "omnifix" cubes, good for doing various mathematical demonstrations and also very satisfying to put together; they make a nice "click."
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Spring
Apologies to any readers we might still have for the lethargy and self-loathing (mine, not the kids'!) that have stopped me from posting anything since we've been back from Egypt.
The re-entry has been, from the kids' point of view, perfectly smooth. Henry has returned to his classmates at "Little Tufts," and seems to fit in fine, although he seems to have lost and not replaced the strong friendships that characterized last year. Thanks to his four months at the Irish School he reads fluently and writes well, so our biggest challenge is trying to get him to put down his Spiderman comic book long enough to do things like eat breakfast, put on shoes, eat dinner, put on pajamas. We have been spending every Saturday in Andover, a godsend for Ken who gets an extra day to work, and a fun routine for the kids and me; my mom has been running a Saturday Math Circle for Henry and a few other five-year-olds. And he still plays ukulele, although there are really not enough hours in the day. He recently lost a lower front tooth, accidentally knocking it out with his toothbrush before it showed any sign of being loose; his reaction of horrified surprise and pain (perhaps because we don't believe in reading books about experiences before he has them) was soon mitigated by the generosity of the tooth fairy. ("But are you sure the Tooth Fairy when you were little was not just your mom and dad?" he asked me while putting the tooth under his pillow. The next morning he had no further questions.)
And Esti is lovely, perfectly adjusted: she has forgotten most of her French but remembered her toilet training; her skin has cleared up; her sentences are complete and sometimes very funny. She is back with Nirmala and Romesh, memorizing the words in picture-books, looking likely to read at three. She is effectively cute/manipulative (it helps to be adorable and to have a good sense of vocal cadence) but can also hold her own when the fists start flying. Often she is the first aggressor. She will start preschool at Little Tufts next year, as Henry moves on to (we think) public-school first grade.
We will see what that entails. It is impossible to guess from their published curriculum what they actually do in class. Besides plant seeds and track their growth, which we're doing on the kitchen counter right now. From these online docs it all seems very cute and nice and thoughtfully designed for about a three-year-old. I'm sorry that Henry is not socially mature enough to make grade-skipping an option. But he isn't. I don't think he's especially brilliant -- just privileged to have decent genes and to have heard more syllables by age 5 than most people probably hear in a lifetime. (At breakfast: "Mom, it says there's no saturated fat in this cereal.") There doesn't seem to be any serious gifted-and-talented program to turn to - the kind of activities that saved my childhood, or at least fifth grade, from being a total wasteland.
So it goes. Pictures soon -- I've been too grumpy to take many, but we do have some shots of toothless Henry, the classic five-year-old photo.
The re-entry has been, from the kids' point of view, perfectly smooth. Henry has returned to his classmates at "Little Tufts," and seems to fit in fine, although he seems to have lost and not replaced the strong friendships that characterized last year. Thanks to his four months at the Irish School he reads fluently and writes well, so our biggest challenge is trying to get him to put down his Spiderman comic book long enough to do things like eat breakfast, put on shoes, eat dinner, put on pajamas. We have been spending every Saturday in Andover, a godsend for Ken who gets an extra day to work, and a fun routine for the kids and me; my mom has been running a Saturday Math Circle for Henry and a few other five-year-olds. And he still plays ukulele, although there are really not enough hours in the day. He recently lost a lower front tooth, accidentally knocking it out with his toothbrush before it showed any sign of being loose; his reaction of horrified surprise and pain (perhaps because we don't believe in reading books about experiences before he has them) was soon mitigated by the generosity of the tooth fairy. ("But are you sure the Tooth Fairy when you were little was not just your mom and dad?" he asked me while putting the tooth under his pillow. The next morning he had no further questions.)
And Esti is lovely, perfectly adjusted: she has forgotten most of her French but remembered her toilet training; her skin has cleared up; her sentences are complete and sometimes very funny. She is back with Nirmala and Romesh, memorizing the words in picture-books, looking likely to read at three. She is effectively cute/manipulative (it helps to be adorable and to have a good sense of vocal cadence) but can also hold her own when the fists start flying. Often she is the first aggressor. She will start preschool at Little Tufts next year, as Henry moves on to (we think) public-school first grade.
We will see what that entails. It is impossible to guess from their published curriculum what they actually do in class. Besides plant seeds and track their growth, which we're doing on the kitchen counter right now. From these online docs it all seems very cute and nice and thoughtfully designed for about a three-year-old. I'm sorry that Henry is not socially mature enough to make grade-skipping an option. But he isn't. I don't think he's especially brilliant -- just privileged to have decent genes and to have heard more syllables by age 5 than most people probably hear in a lifetime. (At breakfast: "Mom, it says there's no saturated fat in this cereal.") There doesn't seem to be any serious gifted-and-talented program to turn to - the kind of activities that saved my childhood, or at least fifth grade, from being a total wasteland.
So it goes. Pictures soon -- I've been too grumpy to take many, but we do have some shots of toothless Henry, the classic five-year-old photo.
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