We just got on 85 and both kids and both dogs are already asleep, Rollie clutching his Star Wars Legos box in his arms.
Archive for the ‘Rollie’ Category
Lego Nap
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010The Blends Project
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010Anybody else get this in their head while doing the Blends project?
For those of you who don’t have a first grader at my kid’s school, the Blends Project is 30% of their grade. Basically, the teacher gives you a list of 20 “blends” – blends are letter combinations, such as “br” and “ch.” The kids have to come up with four words for each blend (CH: Choir, Chorus, Chorizo, Chair). Then, the kids have to draw or cut out pictures representing each of the words. Each cutout must be of a size that it will fit into one fourth of one 20th of a large piece of poster board. Confused? Yeah, the kids are supposed to divide their poster board into 20 equal parts, and each of those parts will contain four pictures. The pictures are then labeled with the name of the word they represent.
Note that I say “the kids” are supposed to be doing all of this. As if kids in first grade can do all of this. Me? I am lucky, in that my kid learned all his blends two to three years ago, so he had no problem coming up with his own words. (Don’t even get me started on the fact that they are not differentiating this project at all for the kids who are strong readers and already know their blends.) Other parents are not so lucky – they have to help their kids figure out four words for each blend.
What ends up happening is that the parents then go to the computer and google clipart that corresponds to the word. Then they print it all out for the kid to cut out. Then the parent has to divide the squares on the poster board. (I mean, come on! How many first graders could figure that out?)
So, basically, if the kids don’t know their blends yet, then the parents end up doing half the work. Even for my kid, who knows his, I end up having to do the clip art portion (took me TWO HOURS last night to google, and cut and paste, and print, the 80 images.) The plus to this is that Rollie and I spent some quality time together. By quality time, I mean that he and i did the images, while Tiller cried under the computer desk, rolling around at my feet, wailing about how bored she was, and I didn’t finish my laundry.
A negative to this whole thing might be that my son did not learn a DAMN thing. Oh! Except for the following “enlightening” images that came up while searching for words he already knew how to spell.
Interesting things that come up on Google Images while searching for pictures of words for Blends project:
drug (people smoking pot, shooting heroin, laying passed out next to an open and spilled bottle of pills with a bottle of bourbon in hand, pot leaf, bong, bag of weed, cartoons with needles hanging out of people’s arms.)
brown (pile of poop, naked African American woman, James Brown mugshot)
Drown (pictures of drowning victims, scary illustrations of drowning people)
Drink (OH GOD, Alt+Tab!)
frenzy (wolves tearing apart some animal, creepy cartoons with people foaming at the mouth, zombie melee)
prank – (one KKK poster, a rear end mooning the camera)
glowstick (rave photos, symbols of hands holding glowsticks up in the air, Rollie: “What’s a rave?”)
spank (Are you kidding me? Me: Don’t you want to pick another word? That one is kind of negative. Rollie: Why? It’s just hitting on the bottom? Me: sigh. Ok. [praying as i hit google], Oh, no, that one is not good. Rollie: Mama, what is? Me: Don’t worry about that one, honey.)
spa (who knew there were so many asian “spa” pictures online?)
blonde? (I don’t even need to describe what came up for this one, right?)
Slip (lots of disturbing photos and cartoons about the band slipknot. R: Mama, what is a slipknot? Me: A kind of knot. R: For putting around your neck?)
Gee. Education is great.
Of Star Talkers and Cavemen
Monday, November 8th, 2010
Tiller and I went to the lake on Friday, while Todd stayed home with Rollie for Sat. soccer. We got there late, so we went to Bojo’s for a late dinner. On the way home, driving back across the lake’s twin bridges, I heard her whispering,
“You stars are so small. You must be very, very far away.”
I love the little things that I hear her say when we remove big brother from the situation. He is so . . .older child (i can say that; I am one.) He talks over her, directs her, tells her what to do. She listens, apes, mimics, follows directions, does as she is told. Only when she is on her own, does her true and very own thought process become evident.
I am always amazed at her and the things she says and comes up with when I get a chance to listen to just her. Tiller sees the world in a very funny and colorful way. The filter that Tiller sees the world through is like no one else’s. It gives her a unique view on things. Take this exchange from Saturday morning . . . .
Tiller and I decided to hit up Waffle House, so that we didn’t have to do dishes and could get out and do our yardwork faster when we got back to the lakehouse. We walked into the Waffle House. It was full for a winter day at the lake. Full of hunters. In fact, the only people not dressed in camo or a Waffle House uniform were Tiller and I. I noticed that she pulled up for a second when we came in the door. I saw her take in the scene as we were walking to our table. When we got there, we took off our coats. I helped her with hers first, and then started to take mine off. As I did, arms trapped in my coatsleeves, I was alarmed as Tiller raised her finger to point at the two hunters closest to us, a man and woman.
As all parents know, it is never good when their kid raises a finger to point at a stranger in a restaurant. Not only is it, in the immortal words of Southern mamas everywhere, “not nice to point, dear,” but you never know what is going to come out of a kid’s mouth when they point something out. The only thing you can bank on is that there will be a lull in conversation and that it’s going to be said loud as hell.
It is usually something completely embarrassing, such as these gems i have experienced firsthand:
“Why doesn’t he have a leg?”
“Why are her eyes like that?”
“That person is really, really big, Mama.”
“That is the oldest person I have ever seen!”
Saturday morning, as I struggled to get my arms out of my coat, and at the same time hiss at Tiller, quietly enough where no one else in the room would hear, but firmly enough that she would know I meant business, “It’s not polite to point, baby,” she dropped her finger, and then gave me the dismayed look that she is famous for. She accompanies this look with two hands out to the side like the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil statue. Her hands bounce up and down slightly as she says at full volume,
“What are those people? Cavemen??”
That’s my Tiller for ya. That’s my Tills.
Halloween Recap 2010
Monday, November 1st, 2010No time to give the details. Fun was had by all, despite Rollie and me feeling a little under the weather.
Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!
Fantastic Friday
Friday, October 29th, 2010Get 5-year-old dressed as Dorothy Gale.
Take pics of kid in driveway, trying to elicit smiles by making husband do flying monkey impersonation. Check
Get to school barely on time. Check.
Try to complete work for job that actually pays; Get only about 1/4 done. Stress about it rest of day. Check.
Deal with fallout for calling neighbor a jackass. Check.
Pick daughter up from school. Check.
Take daughter to lunch. Leave before being seated due to bad manners. (Hers, not mine.) Check.
Drive wailing daughter home and make peanut butter sandwiches for us. Check.
Fold clothes, put over load of laundry, let dog out. Check.
Load Tiller in car, along with stuff for errands. Check.
Drop candy off at pinata house. Check.
Drive to school, hang banner and other stuff for Fantastic Friday. Drop off baked goods. Check.
Get Rollie from class, take him to library to take Lit Guild tests. Check.
Drive home. Make snack. Eat own snack. Read email. Check.
Break up fight between kids. Check.
Put kids in car, call husband to meet us and get cut off before making plans, pull out of driveway. Realize kid left shoes at house. Drive back to house. Turn off car, go back in. Check.
Meet husband in garage coming back out. Snap at husband unnecessarily to get into car because we are late. Check.
Get husband to drop off close to school so won’t miss volunteering timeslot. Check.
Man duck pond AND Go Fish because other volunteer doesn’t show up. Check.
Explain to high school kids who help out and finally get to sit for a minute. Check.
Explain to next shift. Check.
Stand with daughter watching people come out of Haunted house looking scared, and laughing at them. Check.
Watch as son comes out, not looking scared. Worry about his mental state. Check.
Eat BBQ with family, watch children eat too much cotton candy, get blue faces and hands. Check.
Do cakewalk, but fail to win anything. Check.
Reluctantly take tickets from friend with twin babies so she can get her kids out faster. Check.
Find way to burn tickets fastest (Bingo). Check.
Play Bingo with whole family, actually have fun. Check.
Watch husband win Bingo and get restaurant gift certificate. Check.
Play another round with big gambler son, win another gift certificate (manicure). Check!
Decide with son that final tickets should be used for big cakewalk win, just like last year. Son wins cakewalk! Check.
Drive home, find secret gift at doorstep. Check.
Eat cupcakes won at cakewalk with family. Check.
Feel sick. Check.
Clean kitchen. Check.
Put kids to bed. Check.
Open beer. Check.
Watch Red Dawn with husband until time to drink with neighbors. Check.
I’m outtie. Night night.
Funky Friday
Friday, October 22nd, 2010I don’t know why moustaches on kids crack me up so much, but they do.
I love my kid. What can i say?
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010It’s for a good cause, or i wouldn’t ask. . . Rollie likes math, and there is this Math-a-Thon fundraiser thing, and he really wants to do it, and it’s for a good cause, and I feel like I would be a crappy mother for not helping him do it, and for not trying to raise money for sick kids, but i hate asking people for money. Absolutely hate it. Fundraisers are the pits.
Still, here I am. Asking. I love my kid. What can I say.
Do I Seem Stupid to You?
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010I’m not stupid. I know I am fairly intelligent, because as a young student, they give you tests in school, and I scored in the very highest percentiles on those tests. I was “gifted.” They put me in gifted classes, called TAG. I think I went for an hour a day, five days a week, from fourth grade through seventh grade. The rest of the time, I was in regular classes, with regular kids. We all learned the same stuff. Most of it came easily to me. Until we got to fifth grade math.
In fifth grade math, I spent a lot of time doing exercises, over and over, with no apparent reason for doing any of them. I wasn’t figuring anything out. I was just given a formula or an example of some sort, and then I was supposed to learn how to plug things in to make the “problem” and the answer look the way the teacher wanted it to look so that she could mark it correct. Except that there really was no problem; I wasn’t expected to figure out how to do anything. I was just expected to learn how to solve a problem that they were already telling me how to solve. So, i remember spending every spare moment I could find at school reading books.
I probably didn’t explain this very well. You are probably thinking, aren’t those math problems you were doing? What I’m saying probably doesn’t make much sense to you. It will if you read the article I read this morning, which explains it pretty damn well. I felt like i was reading an article written about me. I actually almost cried a couple of times while reading it.
The article was given to me by a friend. She and I both have kids in first grade. Kids who are, to be honest, kind of bored with the school curriculum in general. Take the following example. For homework, my son was supposed to use his weekly spelling words to create five sentences. Each sentence had to have a spelling word in it. (He has not received a spelling word yet that he couldn’t spell. He does not have to study his spelling words. He already knows all of them. They also get “robust vocabulary” words which are supposed to be difficult, and he has also been able to spell every one of those. He has not had a challenging spelling word yet, and he is receiving the “advanced” homework packet.)
Rollie can read the instructions for his homework on his own, meaning i don’t sit with him and do his homework with him, but rather tell him to do his homework, he does it, then I check it and discuss anything amiss. (Which is usually a problem of a) legibility or b) not reading the instructions closely and missing a step in them. I attribute both of these to rushing through the work, because he finds nothing particularly challenging to slow him down.)
So, on this particular day, he produces the following:
This was a crappy scan job, and I am too impatient to fix it, but it basically is as follows:
? ? ? ? Rollie
Who is she?
Is he nice?
Isn’t school supposed
to be fun?
Why do we have to do
homework?
Why is it not fun
at school?
Below that, it reads,
Look back here, mom. ————>
Outside on Scooter.
Do i think my kid doesn’t read instructions well? Well, i think he read it. I think he just thought it was fucking stupid, and so he did something different. I think he was trying to tell me that he thinks it’s stupid. I think he would rather be outside riding his scooter.
I also think he needs to work on his penmanship.
And then there’s the math. School started up in early August. It is almost October. They are still doing simple addition with single digits. One of his homework sheets is a page of five columns of addition exercises. Each column has 25 very simple addition problems. It is supposed to be completed as a drill. Meaning that the kid is supposed to do the column as fast as he can, see how many he gets correct and how quickly. (There is a total for x/25 at the bottom, and for the minutes and seconds it takes to complete.) They do it five times, once for each column. I time him, he rushes through, he misses none of them, he tries to beat his time.
What is he learning? As far as I can tell, not a damn thing.
He learns nothing new. No creative juices flow. He doesn’t have to struggle for anything. No light bulb goes off in his head when he figures something out.
Do you like Math? I never did. I hated Math. Turns out maybe no one ever taught me anything about Mathematics. Turns out I just learned some sad shell of math, and that all along, I detected the senselessness in it all, and I checked out. That “smart kid” (according to their tests) that I was should have been able to do this stuff easily. But I didn’t do it, because I had no motivation to do it.
I ended up in remedial Math in 9th grade. Remedial Math. And I truly believe that it was because I was bored, uninspired, and totally saw through the curriculum to the pointlessness of learning that way. There was no learning going on.
Do I seem stupid to you? I’m not stupid. But I was failed, in a way, by the very same state that I am entrusting to educate my kids.
I don’t want my kids to check out. I want them to get excited about learning. Is that too much to ask? I hope not. Because I am going to fucking ask it, and I am going to ask it a lot.
Here is a page with an introduction to the article, A Mathematician’s Lament, and a little information about the author of the article, a Mathematician and teacher, named Paul Lockhart. It is long (a 25 page PDF), and I think that if you have a kid and you don’t take the hour to read it, you are doing your kid a serious disservice, if only in refusing to take a fresh look at the way we teach math in our country. Please read it. Please.
I included a few quotations from the article below. . .
Sadly . . . if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education. Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.†The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.†Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,†and they are right.
And when I read that, I thought of the boredom and frustration that ten-year-old Anne felt sitting at a desk in elementary school. And I got weepy.
And this, echoing the senselessness of what i was learning. I remember thinking, but why am i doing with this?
By concentrating on what, and leaving out why, mathematics is reduced to an empty shell. The art is not in the “truth†but in the explanation, the argument. It is the argument itself which gives the truth its context, and determines what is really being said and meant. Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity— to pose their own problems, make their own conjectures and discoveries, to be wrong, to be creatively frustrated, to have an inspiration, and to cobble together their own explanations and proofs— you deny them mathematics itself.
And these interesting dialogues are interspersed through the article. They are too lengthy to put them all here.
SIMPLICIO: Are you really trying to claim that mathematics offers no useful or
practical applications to society?SALVIATI: Of course not. I’m merely suggesting that just because something
happens to have practical consequences, doesn’t mean that’s what it is
about. Music can lead armies into battle, but that’s not why people
write symphonies. Michelangelo decorated a ceiling, but I’m sure he
had loftier things on his mind.SIMPLICIO: But don’t we need people to learn those useful consequences of math?
Don’t we need accountants and carpenters and such?SALVIATI: How many people actually use any of this “practical math†they
supposedly learn in school? Do you think carpenters are out there
using trigonometry? How many adults remember how to divide
fractions, or solve a quadratic equation? Obviously the current
practical training program isn’t working, and for good reason: it is
excruciatingly boring, and nobody ever uses it anyway. So why do
people think it’s so important? I don’t see how it’s doing society any
good to have its members walking around with vague memories of
algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of
hating them. It might do some good, though, to show them
something beautiful and give them an opportunity to enjoy being
creative, flexible, open-minded thinkers— the kind of thing a real
mathematical education might provide.SIMPLICIO: But people need to be able to balance their checkbooks, don’t they?
SALVIATI: I’m sure most people use a calculator for everyday arithmetic. And
why not? It’s certainly easier and more reliable. But my point is not
just that the current system is so terribly bad, it’s that what it’s missing
is so wonderfully good! Mathematics should be taught as art for art’s
sake. These mundane “useful†aspects would follow naturally as a
trivial by-product. Beethoven could easily write an advertising jingle,
but his motivation for learning music was to create something
beautiful.SIMPLICIO: But not everyone is cut out to be an artist. What about the kids who
aren’t “math people?†How would they fit into your scheme?SALVIATI: If everyone were exposed to mathematics in its natural state, with all
the challenging fun and surprises that that entails, I think we would
see a dramatic change both in the attitude of students toward
mathematics, and in our conception of what it means to be “good at
math.†We are losing so many potentially gifted mathematicians—
creative, intelligent people who rightly reject what appears to be a
meaningless and sterile subject. They are simply too smart to waste
their time on such piffle.SIMPLICIO: But don’t you think that if math class were made more like art class
that a lot of kids just wouldn’t learn anything?SALVIATI: They’re not learning anything now! Better to not have math classes at
all than to do what is currently being done. At least some people
might have a chance to discover something beautiful on their own.SIMPLICIO: So you would remove mathematics from the school curriculum?
SALVIATI: The mathematics has already been removed! The only question is
what to do with the vapid, hollow shell that remains. Of course I
would prefer to replace it with an active and joyful engagement with
mathematical ideas.SIMPLICIO: But how many math teachers know enough about their subject to
teach it that way?SALVIATI: Very few. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…
And I am struck by the memory of a discussion with my child’s teacher, wherein she admitted feeling “overwhelmed” by the curriculum. Where, in the past, she could rely on her teacher’s workbook to tell her how to challenge the more advanced students, now, she was completely overwhelmed by the technology, and the websites, and she couldn’t find time to learn how to use them to differentiate instruction for the more advanced kids. And I thought, what if the person who was teaching my child had a love of math, and just started, i don’t know, getting my kid excited with thoughts that challenged him, rather than looking for the next level in the math ladder that the website tells her my son should be doing?
It is far easier to be a passive conduit of some publisher’s “materials†and to follow the shampoo-bottle instruction “lecture, test, repeat†than to think deeply and thoughtfully about the meaning of one’s subject and how best to convey that meaning directly and honestly to one’s students. We are encouraged to forego the difficult task of making decisions based on our individual wisdom and conscience, and to “get with the program.†It is simply the path of least resistance:
TEXTBOOK PUBLISHERS : TEACHERS ::
A) pharmaceutical companies : doctors
B) record companies : disk jockeys
C) corporations : congressmen
D) all of the above
I don’t want to pick D. But i pick D. I cannot deny that it is all of the above.
If teaching is reduced to mere data transmission, if there is no sharing of excitement and wonder, if teachers themselves are passive recipients of information and not creators of new ideas, what hope is there for their students? If adding fractions is to the teacher an arbitrary set of rules, and not the outcome of a creative process and the result of aesthetic choices and desires, then of course it will feel that way to the poor students.
I also must admit that there is more than one issue here: Commingled with this fear of faulty math curriculum is also the fact that I fear my special needs child (and very intelligent children do have special needs, too) is being or will be failed by the system, simply because he is too far on one end of the spectrum.
One last thing. I am not criticizing teachers here. I know they work hard. I know they are overworked and that they have limitations in what they can do based on the curriculum, testing, standards-based crap, student/teacher ratios, and class sizes. I know this.
But it does not change that I fear for my child’s education, and ultimately for his imagination and love of learning.
Did you love Math in school? Hate it? Feel failed by the math curriculum in your school system? Were you in a gifted program? What was your experience? Are you a teacher, with a different take on this? Are you a parent struggling with these issues? And if you read the article, I would love to know your thoughts on it. I am really curious.
Seven
Friday, August 27th, 2010My baby is seven today. SEVEN. When you were six, I could still think, I have babies. The baby is gone now. I look at you now, and remember what you were like as a baby, a toddler, a preschooler.
But he is seven now, and seven is no longer baby.
This has been a good year. You started Kindergarten this time last year:
and now you are in First grade. What a difference a year makes!
You are still in the Magnet class and it is fun to see you with your friends. You started riding the bus last year and you still like the bus. Daddy drops you off in the mornings, though, because it means that we get a little more time together before you go off to school and he heads to work. I get you from the bus stop in the afternoons, and you are usually a little grumpy with me. I guess you are tired and hot (it is still August and buses don’t have AC). You did great in Kindergarten, really progressing with your reading now. You still read with Tiller and Daddy before bed, but you also read chapter books after you go to bed, and we are worrying you don’t get enough sleep because of it. You are currently reading, “The Guardians of Ga’Hoole” with Daddy and Tiller, and on your own, you are reading “The Magician’s Nephew.” Just last night, you argued with me about whether you can read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” first, and then go back and read book one (Magician’s Nephew), or whether you are supposed to read One first. I say you can do it either way. Not you. You like order and in an orderly world, you read One first, then move on to Two. Hopefully, some day you can forgive me for making you read Two first.
You and Tiller got razors for Christmas and you ride them around in the garage for an hour at a time. You don’t get sick and you don’t fall and get hurt. (Knock on wood.) Speaking of, we haven’t had any ER visits or really any sickness in a year. You and Tiller both missed a week of school last year because you had a puke once then have a fever for a week virus. But they weren’t bad and it just made you snuggly.
You don’t have too much time for snuggling this year, but occasionally, you will slow down and cuddle on the couch in your pjs with me or daddy. I realize now that they are dwindling that those moments will be fewer and further between. I try to cherish those moments.
You lost some teeth this year! The first two you lost at school and they just sent them home in a plastic baggie with your name written on them in sharpie. I felt a little gypped. But then your tooth got loose when Cousin Luci and Uncle Wade were visiting and you wanted me to pull it, and we made Daddy and Wade squirm while we stood in the kitchen, wiggling the tooth back and forth, wiping the blood with a paper towel and finally making it crack! and come out. You are not scared of the tooth fairy like Aunt Lisa was when we were little.
This was the year you ate all the chocolate out of the Advent Calendar. I know one day it will be funny, but right now it is still too soon. And the year you cut a chunk right out of the front of your hair. And the year that you got a mohawk. Three times.
I am amazed at all of the things you did this year. You played t-ball last fall and this past spring. You are a natural – always raring to go play, and really pretty good. Watching you out on the field, doing celebratory dances when you make a play, is like pure joy for me. I try to be modest, but i just about burst with pride at how you excel. You are about to start soccer this fall, again, and I hope you like it as much.
You learned how to ride a bike this year, and how to swim. You could swim before, but suddenly, you were going underwater and swimming the length of the pool and you even had your first year on Swim Team this summer. (Go Stingrays!) The competitive Mom in me had to wrestle with not pushing you, and letting you do things your way, even though I knew there were pointers I could give you that would help you improve. You finally listened a little bit and really improved your time, and then you spent the rest of the summer asking me to give you “some more pointers.” It was pretty cute, and I liked that you asked me, because usually, you want to do everything yourself, and don’t want anyone to tell you how to do it.
You also learned to go off the diving board! I can’t even tell you how terrified i was when you and Tiller and Daddy came home saying you both knew how to go off the diving board. And sure enough, we would go to the pool and you and your friends would jump off the diving board, over and over for hours on end. And then we would go home and you would say you didn’t feel good, but i knew it was just that you were completely waterlogged.
You have reached the point where you can sit and watch a whole baseball game (in person or on tv) and I am very much looking forward to watching some football with you this fall. You have learned the rules and can have a great conversation about it, and I never realized how satisfying it could be to have those discussions with you.
Just about a month ago, i let you drive the JetSki (with me right behind you) at the Lake. I had the kill switch, but I pulled over in a huge cove, far away from the shore or docks, and I let you sit in front of me, and taught you a little about how to drive it. Then I said, do you want to try? And you were excited. I was prepared for you to hit the gas too hard even though I warned you not to, so I wouldn’t get thrown off, but I don’t think you were prepared for it, and it scared you. You didn’t want to try and drive anymore, and I think it was a good lesson. Riding with you kids is one of my favorite things to do. We drive around to some usual spots, usually in the morning, before there are many folks out on the lake and you are learning your way around. You know the usual spots: Bulldog, Aerie, The Warm Water, Rooty Creek, Crooked Creek, and Goat Island. I ask where you want to go and you almost always want to go to Goat Island. It’s kind of “our place.” At the end of our rides, I always head back towards the house, and I make you tell me how to get there. When we get back near the cove, I ask if you want to do some circles, and you always say yes, and then I ride us in circles until we’re a little dizzy and you are just on the very verge of being scared. Each time, we go a little harder and faster. And this summer, we started taking you and Tiller out on the tube (nice and slow). The first time, we went out, and you were the guinea pig (except you kept calling it being the Hamster) and Foley rode as spotter. After that, I started teaching you and Tiller to be spotters for each other, and that has worked well. Maybe next year we’ll try skis.
You talk back a bit now, and you fight with us, and you probably are a little too addicted to video games. You definitely have your own ideas about how you want to do things, and you and I get into some arguments, but I am so very proud of the smart, funny, laughing, passionate boy you are. I love your eagerness, and your gap-toothed smile, and the way you drag your feet when you walk up the hill from the bus stop. I know you can’t stay my baby forever, that I have to work hard to make you a wonderful young man, to teach you respect and pride and the value of an education and courtesy, but I understand now why Mom and Dad still say I’ll always be their first baby.
You will always be my first baby. The baby with the skin that tans easily and the big brown eyes that just make me melt and the thick, wavy brown hair that always reminds me so much of my own, and of my Dad’s, and of the inexplicable ways that we are all three so similar, just a little line of stitches marching down the hem of time. Pop, Daddy, Me, You.
You. My baby. Always.
You in the last year.
And you this morning, on your seventh birthday.
Green Recessionista? Cheap Meanie?
Monday, August 23rd, 2010I’m really not sure whether this makes me eco-conscious, or a big old, no fun stick-in-the-mud. I do know that it looks frighteningly like something Pop would have done, although I did not take it as far as his sister Mary, who would just strike out the writing on cards and then reuse them.
Perhaps would have looked cuter had I saved weeks of comics and wrapped it all in those? Curious to see what Rollie’s reaction will be when his gift is not clad in Spidey or, um, anything with color on it.
So, am i Green or Cheap? (or both?)