[ Posted by bibliomom
Tue, 31 Jan 2006 02:29:00 GMT ]
A Good Little Monkey
So my friendly, neighborhood Costco has Read-Along Fun with Curious George. As this is the original Curious George storybook with a decent read-along cd (complete with Reading Rainbow style, monkey pipe-smoking sound effects) and Costco only wants $5.99 for the set vs. Amazon’s $9.95, I think it’s a pretty good deal. I mean, jeeze – the book alone lists for more than that.
(Perfect iPod fodder – bwahaha!)
They had a couple other George stories also available on cd, but since they were billed as “Margaret and H.A. Rey’s Curious George” (and since I don’t know which stories are original and which are much later, crummier additions) I abstained. I can live with monkey-knapping, prank phone calls and general amok-titude, but my tolerance for sequels is short lived.
Other general info: the book and cd come in a flimsy plastic “carry case” which doesn’t require an acetylene torch to open (and can therefore be reused); the cd just fits into a depression in the case and has no separate case of its own. The book is the nice, healthy 11 x 9 model with 56 sturdy pages and the original color illustrations – or at least the ones I’m used to. The cd has two tracks, one with the “page-turn signals” and one without – about 13 minutes a piece.
Go forth, yee monkey fans, and score. Trust me – this sort of thing doesn’t seem to go on sale very often.
Posted in books, cool kid stuff | Tags "Curious, "Read-Along", Costco, George" | 2 comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Wed, 25 Jan 2006 03:55:00 GMT ]
“I need to tell you something, Mom.”
These words now strike fear into my heart. Don’t get me wrong – I’m happy the boy talks. We’ve spent years in speech therapy and thousands of dollars to get him to talk. We’re about to spend even more time and money trying to get him to speak so that mere mortals can understand more than three words out of five. The speaking isn’t the problem. It’s his inability to stop.
Most kids seem to go through the ‘talking’ stage around three or so – that lovely stage where they wander around behind you saying, “Mom, mom …” and asking why the sky is blue, if they can have pudding for breakfast, and whether or not we really can express mail sister to the moon. But my son, oh frabjous day, didn’t hit this stage until he turned 5 1/2 – at which point he’d watched (and memorized) an ungodly number of science and nature videos. And of course he already had an outrageous imagination.
“Mom, Mom – did you know that Mount St. Helen is a young volcano? We have lots of volcanoes in Washington. Mount Ranier is a volcano, too. Mom, Mom! I need to tell you something, Mom. Mount Fuji is a volcano. There are lots of volcanoes in Japan, Mom. Tiger-tooth went to Japan, Mom. He’s Japanese! And part lamb. Well, he’s part lamb now, that he’s grown up Mom. Did you see our ninja costumes, Mom?”
By about the fourth “Mom”, I’ve developed a nervous twitch. By the eighth, I’m desperately searching the back of the cabinet for kava tea – or something stronger. Because there doesn’t seem to be any real limit to how long he can talk about dinosaurs, volcanoes, tornados, the earth’s crust, his stuffed lamb, or his horde of imaginary, multi-species friends. As long as I’m here (and I’m always here) he’s got someone to tell about all the amazing things he thinks about – as he thinks about them, on a minute to minute basis.
Speaking is good. Learning is good. Science is good, and this is all going to be so great for him when he grows up, right? I mean, come on – give the kid a white board and a topic and he’s disturbingly like his dad. And people like to hear Scott lecture, right? Still, some days, it’s really all I can do to bite my tongue whenever he comes over to tug my sleeve and say, oh-so-seriously, “I need to tell you something, Mom.” One of the days I’m actually going to say it – “Oh, for the love of heaven! Do you really have to?!”
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[ Posted by bibliomom
Fri, 09 Dec 2005 20:30:00 GMT ]
A facetious title, at best, but I do have to admit that Scott’s new job is providing me with an amusing new past time. Seattle’s used to Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks and various other branded companies, but I’m getting a lot of surprise when I tell people that Scott’s training at Google. First there’s the automatic, “Oh that’s nice,” usually followed by, “Wait. Google?” I’m not sure if they’re surprised that ‘that search thingy’ employs people, if they’re impressed it’s a company they’ve heard of, or if they just didn’t realize that Google has offices here.
No matter what, it’s been kinda fun.
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[ Posted by bibliomom
Fri, 09 Dec 2005 19:52:00 GMT ]
So when did Mapquest become evil? I remember when it was this super cool innovation – just type in the address and bam! directions du jour. Okay, so it took it quite a while for them to figure out where my house actually was, but it mostly worked.
Last month for the first time in quite a while, I called upon Mapquest for your basic to/from directions. At least I tried to. Every time I clicked on a text window, the spinny wheel of death would start ticking away and I’d have to sit. And sit. And wait for it to stop before I could type. And half the time, the second I struck a key, it would start with the spinning again. Now, I hate the spinny wheel of death, in a deep and personal way. Part of it may be because of all the time and money that gets spent on computers in my household. Part of it may be because I know what our DSL is capable of. But whatever the reason, the heart or the shoes, Mapquest was just tortuous to use. I assumed it was probably complicated by an old and (according to Scott) infirm laptop and too much bittorrent. (“Yes, dear – I’m almost done with the next set of Meitantei Conan …”)
Today, however, just ticked me off. I was using my nice little mac mini, bittorrent isn’t even working right, so it’s nothing but a big empty dsl pipe. And still Mapquest has the evil spinny wheel. And to make it even more fun, they can’t figure out where I live, despite the fact that I provide an address! What, don’t you want us to add our own zip +4? What, you mean you weren’t looking for assorted businesses in your area? Are you sure you don’t want us to autofill business from the greater Seattle area? They have a first name like yours – surely that’s what you were looking for. Right? RIGHT?!
It’s like the frickin’ toaster from Red Dwarf. “I know you’re trying to get to Duvall, but how about some toast?”
It took ten separate rounds of the spinny wheel (one for each character) to delete the zip and accompanying +4, and it responded by re-auto-filling it and trying to convince me that my secret identity is that of a mild mannered dentist in West Seattle. I gave up.
So long, Mapquest – Google maps just stole your spot on my bookmark bar. At least if they ever break, I know who to yell at.
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[ Posted by bibliomom
Thu, 17 Nov 2005 06:08:00 GMT ]
Scott and I often claim that we didn’t order a princess. We are especially certain we didn’t order a princess of destruction, and yet here we are with a two-year old terrorist, holding our house hostage. She drops mini-screwdrivers into jugs of honey during breakfast; attempts to run her own bubble bath, with full bottles of shampoo bubbles; clothes explode off her body like she was wired with high explosives. And this is when she isn’t ravaging my pantry like a starved wildebeest, trailing my best silk nightie behind her.
Never having been a princess myself, I tried to deny her genetic destiny. Sadly, princess-hood, much like my son’s blue eyes, seem to be a genetic throwback and hers can be traced quite easily to both of our sisters. Traipsing about like you’re the cutest thing on the planet right after wreaking nine flavors of havoc; looking serenely innocent in the face of self-inflicted chaos; weeping big tearless sobs at the point of an accusing finger – dangerous signs, those.
Her most recent reign of terror has left me seeking literary comfort, most recently revisiting Harry Potter and Stross’s Atrocity Archives. Adding obscure quasi-mythical expletives to my rants when I find my little princess of darkness, say, frolicking in a basket of folded laundry, is my current attempt to find humor in the situation. So when I first walked into my bedroom to find that my daughter had painted her naked self neck to knee with bright blue nail polish, I thought “Oh! The little Pictsie Princess strikes again.” Well, okay – my first ‘thought’ was an incoherent howl, which was shortly followed by starting a tub, throwing her at Scott, and swearing at my malfunctioning washer while holding an armful of polish enhanced sheets, but the image of those darned Cornish Pictsies presented itself soon enough.
Body painting is apparently for princesses, and has always been in her repertoire of ‘fun things to do’ while Mom’s doing something foolish, like putting away laundry or doing lessons with brother. She’s used ball points, felt tips, sharpies and assorted food products, and occasional expands her performance art to include nearby walls, counters, and library books. Even harnessed to her seat with washable markers and a big pad of papers, she proved capable of full body coverage in a minimum of time. Markers were banned. Ink pens were confiscated. Even crayons finally made it onto the “must be supervised” list.
So how did she find a bottle of sealed polish, in the back of a closed drawer, in a room with the lights out and the door shut?
Dark magic, I tell you. And that darned princess gene. Festive body painting and nail polish? All princess, all the time.
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[ Posted by bibliomom
Thu, 10 Nov 2005 08:02:00 GMT ]
I’m just *so* clever. Or at least that’s what I thought when I moved a tray of tea things up to my bedroom yesterday – the better to facilitate an evening cuppa, my dear. Little bags of tea; shatterproof and sealable containers of sugar and honey; those little stir straws, and a pair of sturdy coffee mugs. After all, I’m not deranged enough to leave Wedgewood where my little destruct-a-boo can reach it.
And yet apparently I’m still stupid enough to leave a half pot of tea up there.
I wonder if the Romans knew you could make quite passable cement out of apple blossom honey and sugar? Or that countertops so encrusted need a compassionate sprinkling of tea and copious quantities of Costco bandaids?
The princess pleads entrapment. I’m trying very hard to be thankful she didn’t find the loose leaf tea I had hidden in the drawer.
But then again, there’s always tomorrow.
Posted in my crazy life, food | no comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 23:52:00 GMT ]
My nieces had their annual Cat Party a few weeks back, and being the “good aunt” I volunteered to make treats. Being me, I decided to go completely overboard. I mean, how often do your nieces and their friends flood grandma’s house to scarf down treats, dress as cats, and otherwise party like demented elementary students?
Well, okay – the “annual” is probably a tip off that this has happened before, but middle school looms and I’ve been feeling all crazy and domestic anyway.
So after copious research and half-baked sample recipes (“Here baby, I’m not going to bother icing it – just smear some on top before you taste it …”) I finally decided on home-made, gourmet-style ding-dongs. I had found all kinds of recipes online for homemade
Ding-Dong Cakes and cupcakes, and in fact did a sample using their repulsive filling recipe and a boxed cake mix. Thursday morning I woke up bright and early, invited my friend Jan over to keep me company and watch anime, while I baked the much lusher looking
Cream-Filled Devil’s Food Cupcakes from Wayne Harley Brachman’s
Retro Desserts cookbook. I’d seen him guesting on Food Network before and decided to give it a shot.
Things seemed to be going well – the recipe was fussy, but doable. Jan was happy to shout out advice between Ranma episodes and fix pbj for the kids. Then my sister called. Could I pick her up at noon instead of 11:00? What? WHAT?! You mean the party’s TODAY?! Whereupon I realized after all the super-fussy, triple-sifting, cooking-with-the-anal-retentive-chef fussiness, I’d added twice as much coffee as I was supposed to. So Jan and I did a slap-dash, no-sifting second batch to add to the first and shoved them in the oven while she helped me dress the kids and collect my stuff.
Thank heaven for good friends! And for the unbelievable amount of filling produced by the previous ding-dong cake recipe, which I had kept in the fridge, just in case. We shoved everything in the car, picked up my sister, and put everything together at my mom’s house. BTW, the ding-dong cake filling goes a long way in filling cupcakes and refrigerates and thaws beautifully.
I made the mistake of letting someone else ice the cupcakes with the slap-dash Ghiradelli milk-chocolate ganache (let’s call it a ‘half-iced’ job), let them set up in the fridge, and then melted some white chocolate and used a sandwich baggie to try slap a Kitty-chan picture onto them.
Sigh. The concept was pretty good, and with practice they’d probably be pretty darn cute. The cupcakes tasted great, imho, even the repellent filling (“Hey, look! There’s stuff inside!”) and I thought the milk chocolate ganache was a nice, kid-friendly contrast to the very rich, very yummy, chocolate cupcakes. Which, by the way, get big points from me for turning out despite my botching the recipe. Even the white chocolate turned out to be easy to work with and I was very pleased with how well it set up.
And the kids definitely didn’t seem to mind. (Like my sister’s homemade pinata?)
I definitely need to work on my decorative skills. And not trying to decorate cupcakes between party games would be good, too. Ah, well – there’s always next year’s party. And I might even remember when it is.
Posted in food, cool kid stuff | Tags cat, cupcakes, party | no comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 20:51:00 GMT ]
So we finally went to see The Magic School Bus Kicks Up A Storm exhibit at the Seattle Children’s Museum this last week. Aside from the fact that no bus could possibly be as cool as the Cat Bus from the Japanimation exhibit a few years back, it was okay.
Broadcast the weather. As a T-Rex.
That was the problem, imho. It was just “okay”. To clarify, it’s all about weather. Sure, it had a ‘be a weather person’ broadcast set and a ‘mix your own weather’ at the helm of the Magic School Bus, but on the whole the exhibit seemed a bit disjointed and confusing. The ‘weather person’ broadcast set had a t.v. where kids could watch their ‘broadcast’ – unfortunately it was perched behind them on the back of the set wall.
Mix water, wind, and heat to make weather.
And while it was fun to ‘mix up a tornado’, the necessary reading skills and the lack of complete directions meant my five year old just kept turning knobs and pressing buttons whileI tried to figure it out – and I pretty much assume that anything that takes me 2 -3 minutes to figure out is going to utterly stump most of the under 7 crowd. (btw - push the flashing button.)
And who else do they think is coming to the Children’s Museum? Granted, I’m sure school groups are coming en masse, and doubtless there are kids over 7 among them, but the fact remains that as neat as the Magic School Bus looked, I kept looking around for the teacher’s manual that explained how some of the exhibits worked. (And there were a few that obviously didn’t.) Other than button pressing, there’s a limited amount of unguided activity for younger kids. (Though we did get to see Liz.)
Something for the kiddies.
Prep work: before you go, read (or re-read)
The Magic School Bus Kicks up a Storm and
The Magic School Bus Inside a Hurricane, as quite of bit of the exhibit (and small experiments) seem to be based on these – hence the name. Then bring one or both to use as a crib sheet for what I assume is a ‘make your own clouds’ station – unexplained cotton balls and glue sticks some distance from the ‘types of clouds’ exhibit. Unless you really want to admit to your kindergardener that you can’t remember the difference between cirrus clouds and cirra … curricu … colmbo … – you know, those other ones. The books might also be handy in figuring out how to work some of the experiments.
Now you and your Magic School Bus and/or science fan are ready to go – you’ll probably even enjoy it. Just try not to swear too loudly when some screaming four year old in an oversize raincoat starts pushing your buttons while you’re trying to figure out how to mix up a hurricane.
I’ll rate it a:
B - for Magic School Bus fans & young scientists
C - for everyone else and most of the under 7 crowd
Exhibit runs through November 27, 2005.
Posted in cool kid stuff, educational & homeschool | no comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Tue, 27 Sep 2005 17:37:00 GMT ]
So I was telling Becky (my massage therapist) about my day when she suggested – quite unfairly – that these were not the kinds of things that happen to normal people.
The day started out fairly simply; I had finally gotten around to cleaning up some venison my brother had given us, and was sitting at the kitchen counter, gloved up, wielding a kitchen knife, and sorting a pile of bloody meat into a variety of kitchen bowls. The kids were running amok, as usual, when Gabe suddenly yelled out, “Mom! EMERGENCY!” I turned to see a petite fanny, utterly devoid of clothing, go streaking down the hall – hardly an emergency. It wasn’t even unusual. “What’s she doing?” I demanded, trying to keep my purple nitrile gloves from dripping deer blood around the living room. Gabe, in the mean time, has begun dancing around in his blue dino undies and a fit of agitation. “Sister has the BIG CHOCOLATE BAR!” I decided not to pursue the issue of when his clothes had departed his body and stuck with the essentials. “Well, go get her!” I yelled back, sending the rabid retriever after the small naked bunny who was hiding in the front room. I followed along in my best o.r. doctor pose, gloves still in the air, hoping to avoid bloodshed.
And of course, Sohpie-bunny was there, hiding behind the couch and gnawing at a 2 lb bar of dark chocolate. Gabe jumped her and pinned her to the ground. “Give it back, sister! Give it back! It’ll make you sick!” Sophia howled with rage – quite the trick since she was still clenching the chocolate with her teeth, as well as her grubby fists. I waved my doctors’ paws from the hallway, cheering and remonishing. “Get it away from her! No – don’t hurt her! Sophie – you give that back!” A feral howl announced her failure to keep her prize. Gabe danced around, waving the mutilated bar in the air before retreating to “hide it”.
I went back into the kitchen, banged my head on the counter a few times, and went back to the venison. After all, it wasn’t going to clean itself and we had a busy day ahead of us.
Posted in my crazy life | no comments
