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Well, it takes quite a lot at this point to make me want to get back into a classroom but this book did.
I read quite a bit of Vivian Gussin Paley while I was getting my ECE credential and even saw her speak. She has an amazing ability to observe children and take them as individuals - not as what adults think children are.
This book is about her final year of teaching, about a charismatic little black girl and her fascination with Leo Lionni and how that drives the curriculum, about literary analysis (a theme with the last book!), and about the role of an individual within a community.
Reading her again - as an individual - not as a teacher, I was overwhelmed with how much I missed watching children and trying to understand how their minds work and what that means. I have one child to observe now, and it's not the same.
Fascinating, easy to read, and incredibly insightful. Not as good as, say, Wally's Stories, but still well worth reading.
The chum started off the day with a long conversation with his daddy about envelopes “like paper pockets” after he opened valentines from his various grands.
We had already undergone the drama of the chum making valentines for his best chums and his family (not us though, why? who knows) We stuck heart stickers on ourselves and went to the park. Stopped off to give heart shaped
stickers to our adored and adoring coffee shop employees.
I filled my pocket with the heart stickers so we were able to give some to friends we saw at the park too. the chum couldn’t muster a “Happy Valentine’s Day” but was very happy to give them out.
After nap, we made brownies for daddy in the heart -shaped pan. For some reason, cooking with the chum was the opposite experience to making valentines with the chum. He measured, he sifted, he unwrapped the chocolate, he put sprinkles on top…. no problems at all.
Then he had his very first ever licking the spatula experience.
We nearly came to drama when he wanted to eat the brownies right away but grandma arrived to get her valentine from the chum.
Then my husband, the chum and I all went out for a walk together - which we never seem to do. Usually a walk is had when someone is taking the chum away from the house so things can be achieved. So that was a nice family togetherness moment.
We had a delicious and gourmet meal of baked potatoes, beets, and cheesy rice (you can tell I cooked - not the gourmet chef husband) and the chum got pink milk.
The brownies came out great. The chum had his small bit and then behaved like a rapid wolverine for the next hour.
Isn’t it one of the hardest things to shift from being a mother to a wife in 2 minutes flat?
It took me a shower and 2 glasses of port.
My husband bought us a box of really fabulous gourmet chocolates with all kinds of amazing centers – lavender honey, tea of red berries…...
We ate them by candlelight in the bedroom.
Overall it was a wonderful, kid-friendly, but romantic Valentine’s Day.
I
think the day needs to be about making a point to show the people you
care for that you love them….. not the day that makes up for the other
364 days where we fail to be caring.
Because that would need to be a very sizable gift. And a pretty crappy world.
Who or what do you really love?
I really love the chum, my husband, lying in bed once it's warmed up, massages, feeling tipsy, having sex, smelling flowers, endorphins, being in the water on a hot day, dressing up to go out, driving with the windows down and the music up loud, things that are cozy, mochas, cookies, dancing and waterfalls.
What method do you use to prepare your coffee or tea?
Submitted by AgentBouche.
My husband is a coffee snob? Geek? I'm not sure what the correct term would be. Anyway this means we have a process that takes more steps than my pathetic, caffeine addicted, self would like to produce a coffee of high quality that I then destroy with milk and Torani.So I boil water in the electric kettle, grind the beans in the burr grinder, and then combine them all in the thermal press pot carafe. Let brew for 5 minutes then press.
Them pollute with a lot of milk and a tablespoon of Torani (preferable hazelnut or vanilla)That's a lot of work for someone who can't even change a diaper before coffee.
This is a cross post from 43things. Sorry subscribers.
Finally completed The Biographer’s Tale by A.S. Byatt.
May I begin by saying that rarely has a book made me feel so stupid?
Not only was the text profoundly non-linear, it also assumed that the reader has some degree of understanding of taxonomy, eugenics, the works of Ibsen (who I’ve read but disliked), and post-structuralist literary theory. My understanding of most of these areas is at about a high school level. Add in occasional phrases in Latin and references to authors I’ve not only never read but have never heard of.....
And the non-linear plot. Every once in a while there would be a page or two where the narrator would get going and I’d think “OK. I can read this. But then we would return to the box of notecards he was trying to decode with a paragraph from “Peer Gynt” next to a paragraph about drawings of certain flowers and then one about facial characteristics.
Reading this book felt more like translation than reading.
Now Possession was hard to read too – 4 narratives crossing and recrossing and often not in chronological order and yes, you’d be into the thick of it, really reading and then Argh! 6 pages of poetry! But it was all going somewhere and the threads pulled together into a gripping story.
In this book, the threads never came together to make anything at all and even the most basic questions about the narrator were unresolved at the end.
But – I completed it and any book I choose next will feel easy by comparison.
So I spend the entire last week tending (albeit in a less than virtuous way) to the sick husband. And now I'm getting sick?
I swear, I have spent this entire fall sick, I just really don't want to spend the entire winter sick too!
I need to exercise! I need to be able to tend to the tiny man with energy!
Argh!
I'm hoping this is a minor cold. It had better be. Seriously.
It's pouring today. The kind of rain where you think you're set with a nice sprinkle, then suddenly it opens up on you like a hose. Usually at the most inopportune moment - like when you need to get the cranky toddler, the bag of groceries, the gallon of milk, and a clear helium balloon from the car to the house.
This morning we all went to get our Christmas tree. The Graton fire department has bought one of the many Christmas tree farms within a mile of the house. I guess they plan a new fire house there so trees were priced to move and qualified as a charitable donation. A bargain twice.
We set off through
a) Peering around trees and saying "Boo!' to which I was to respond either "Eek!" or "Rats" according to the whims of the tiny dictator
b) Running wildly down the rows of trees shrieking "Down a hill" and falling over stumps of already cut trees
c) Either ignoring us or yelling "No!" (This portion of the plan seems to be more of an ongoing project)
The trees were clearly not maintained much in the last year: many dead, generally overgrown, and not thinned real well so trees too close together and flattened or dwarfed. The oddest thing was that there were many different species, but planted in no real order. For example, there would be 2 blue trees in the middle of a bunch of Douglas fir but then no more anywhere around. We walked all over the property, getting quite wet, assessing the options.
I really liked the blue pine but there were very few and all too small. There were some fabulous spruce trees that had a great shape and looked stunning with the raindrops all over them - but with ornaments? A major pain. No branch space!
As usual with me and DD, there was a period of doing the dance of deferral ("What do you want?" "Well, I don't really have an opinion, what do you want?" "Well, I want to make sure I'm not running over your opinion with my opinion." Argh!) but we did end up with a very interesting tree. I have no idea what it is but I figured that as it is some odd species, we should get it for the uniqueness alone.
Of course, we didn't realize 'til we got it home that it's a bit sharp but my hope was that it will discourage the chum from playing with it. Dream on. He's already hidden behind it to poop. And yelled "Boo" at me about 15 times.
We were lucky with the rain. It really opened up as we drove away with the tree all tidily bagged. My husband got quiet wet lugging it in, but nothing like would have happened had we been running up and down the rows.
In celebration I made cocoa. The chum has been reading about it but hadn't had it yet. And, as with all sweets, his reaction was exactly what you would expect from a baby encountering Lima beans for the first time. He squoze his little face into an
expression of surprise and distaste and said, "Don't LIKE it." Not loudly, but emphatically. Loon.
I saw this on "Cath's":http://catht.vox.com/ blog and was so thrilled by it I had to start this blog to have somewhere to post to qualify. True! I am that lame!
This challenge was put out by, Mizbooks and here is the basic premise -
** Pick 12 books - one for each month of 2007 - that you've been wanting to read (have been on your "To Be Read" list) for 6 months or longer, but haven't gotten around to.
** Then, starting January 1, 2007, read one of these books from your list each month, ending December 31, 2007.
I loved this idea because, frankly, the state of affairs in our library is tragic. We have way way way too many unread books. This has been a problem for quite a while because my husband and I love to hang out and browse in used book stores and that so often leads to buying. My special vice seems to be finding the more obscure works of authors who I've read 1 or 2 books by- not reading mind you - but finding and buying.
Then the arrival of the chum brought reading to a grinding halt and any sort of serious reading has yet to resume. I need some sort of structure to get to the books that I really do want to read but never seem to actually get off the shelf and open.
So here's my list - order subject to change at a moment's notice:
1. The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins
2. A Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman
3. Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene
4. High Society by Dave Sim
5. The Girl with the Brown Crayon by Vivian Gussin Paley
6. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
7. The Biographer’s Tale by A.S. Byatt
8. The Road to San Giovanni by Italo Calvino
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martell
10. Amy’s Eyes by Richard Kennedy
11.Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
12. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien
Recent Comments
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Waterfall Nymph said:
Ah, it is not his birthday yet, but I was just struck by how huge he's getting. So those were... read more
on A year passes -
Cath said:
[this is good]Why did I miss this 10 months ago? Sounds like a great day. read more
on Valentine's Day -
on Family