bibliomom

While my son has worked his way past the excellent beginner BOB books, he’s by no means a flawless and accomplished reader – and that’s okay. He’s only six, after all. But it does mean that we’re always on the lookout for beginner readers that he 1) is capable of reading with minimal guidance and 2) is interested enough in to sit and just look through on his own. The Step into Reading edition of David and the Giant is both.

One of their Level 2 readers, it has a little more text and a lot more plot that he’s been reading, but they do a good job of keeping the narrative clean and the wording simple. In short, it’s a charming, easy to read edition of a familiar story. It lists for $3.99, but since WalMart (which I normally think is t3h 3vil) has a good selection of early readers for $2.50, it might be worth a special trip.

(Oh, and for those who are wondering, it manages to stay fairly true to the original story without being overly gory, preachy, or smarmy – an accomplishment in and of itself.)

After Scott won his Xbox 360, he “gifted” me with Burnout Revenge. “I bought it for you …” I was still turning the box over, looking for where he’d scrawled “Homer” across it.

I hate racing games, mostly because I suck at racing games. I’m one of those horrible people who waves their controller around in the air like it’s bewitched, screaming, “Turn, damn it, TURN!!!”

But I have to give Burnout credit – it’s more than just racing; a fair bit of the game is about crashing, something my family seems to have a flair for. (It took Scott days to beat our 6 year old’s high crash score, and believe me, he worked at it.) So, if you can get someone else to get you past the first few levels where you have to beat the other cars, a whole bunch of ‘how big a crash can I create’ levels start opening up like crazy.

In short: big fun, even if you suck at racing and/or gaming. It’s also a good party game since it’ll let about six people take turns crashing and it’s actually fun to watch other people play.

Of course there are people who say that games where you speed a virtual Carl’s Junior delivery truck off an overpass and onto a crowded on-ramp, just encourage reckless driving – those poor virtual people in Japan certainly never saw it coming.

And I’d be lying if I said Scott and I haven’t been driving along and said, “Wow – how many points would you get for knocking that dump truck into the Park & Ride?” But games like Burnout aren’t the problem.

It’s friggin’ movies like Cars. No matter how long I play Burnout, I have zero desire to send my car careening into a brick wall. I’ve seen Cars twice in the last couple of weeks and both times I had to fight my lead foot the entire way home. It made me nostalgic for college road trips and the days when the only person I had to worry about killing in the car was me. I like to drive fast. Not too fast, not ‘in danger of going out of control’ fast, not Burnout fast – just fast enough to feel the road; fast enough to where you actually need to pay attention. It’s the point at which driving ceases being a chore, a monotonous trudge from Point A to Point B.

It’s when driving starts to be fun again. Which is what Cars is all about.

So while Burnout makes a good party game, I wouldn’t worry too much about feeling a sudden need to barrel roll into a logging truck. The Cars dvd release could be problematic, though. Wanna go visit your aunty in So-Cal, kids?

Mama can drive.

How nifty is Jolly and Useful?! It’s the place I bought the Maisy plates for Sophie’s birthday and they just have the best Maisy and Peter Rabbit selection of, well, jolly and useful things. (Can I tell you how badly I want the Maisy eggcup?)

Sure, it’s in the UK, so shipping’s on the steep side, but since there prices were cheaper (and their selection much better) than any place I could find in the states, I figured it was worth it.

The service was good, the plates are adorable (and seem to be holding up well in the dishwasher) and the cute little apron I bought her is also working out quite well.

Our UK postage price is the tiny, almost laughable, sum of £1 per item or less, with free postage if you spend £25. And international shoppers, we haven’t forgotten you: you get great value shipping, tax removed at the checkout, online currency conversion and the spontaneous outbreak of world peace shortly after you pay!* *(probably not true)

They even have a sense of humor ;-) The only problem I had is with Safari, which sends their site into epileptic fits. Firefox seems to do just fine, though.

Now, I just need to figure out who Elmer Elephant is; if he’s featured on their site, he’s got to be good.

Picture, if you will, the idyllic scene of an adorable pig-tailed preschooler, perched on Mama’s knee, book in hand and rapt with attention. Now picture the same child (but much dirtier) crawling around my lap and up and over my head before yanking the book out of my hand in order to rapidly flip through the pages herself.

Now guess which scene is the norm at my house.

It’s not that she doesn’t love books – she loves to look through brightly illustrated picture books, preferably featuring her favorite tv characters. But as much as she loves looking at Dora, she just doesn’t have the patience to sit through the direct-from-tv-scripted text.

Hola! It’s Valentine’s day! Boots and I just finished making a valentine’s card for my grandma! Mi abuela! We’ve also got a special Valentine’s Day surprise for her.
WIll you help us bring the surprise to Grandma’s house? Great!

This is all on the opening page. Needless to say, by the time we get to the special surprise, Bug’s grabbed the book and flipped the page herself.

Which is why we love the Maisy books. Instead of me having to make up my own story in order to keep pace with her manic page flipping (“Look! There’s Dora and Boots! Hi, Dora! Hi, Boots” insert page turn noise here), most of the Maisy books are just flat out geared for small kids with no attention span.

Take Maisy’s Train. For starters, it’s a board book – perfect for violent page turners. Second, it’s illustrated in bright, primary colors, with simple illustrations. Third, it’s only about 16 pages long. Last, and more importantly, the text consists of simple descriptions of what’s going on in the pictures and only takes 5 or 6 seconds to read – about the length of time it takes to look the picture over and turn the page.

Maisy is driving her train today. All aboard. Toot-toot.

insert page turn noise here

We’re off to the country. Hello, Geese!

It’s that basic. And yet at their best, the Maisy books are also utterly charming and entertaining. Reading Maisy’s Fire Engine makes that same wiggly girl fall off my lap giggling with delight instead of impatience.

Now, there’s a whole herd of Maisy books and videos (the videos are largely the book and text set to calm, entetaining music – we’re rather fond of those, too). There’s board books, paper books, flap books, slide/pull tab books, and a book that turns into a paper doll house. My daughter has matured a little and is now willing to sit through just about anything Maisy, but some of the stories are a little snappier than others, and different sets tend to follow different themes. For instance, Where Are Maisy’s Friends? and Where is Maisy’s Panda are two of our favorite Lift-the-Flap books where Maisy’s searching for something (“Who’s that hiding under the bed?”) – really basic and especially fun for hands-on kids. Maisy Drives the Bus and Maisy’s Pool are inexpensive paper picture books that have a bit more of a story and which my daugter adores. Maisy’s Big Flap Book is more of an activity book than a story (“Maisy and Tallulah work in the garden. Look how many flowers they have grown! Can you count the flower and bugs in each row?” proceed to flip up 15 flower flaps) but what’s not to love about an oversized board book with flaps? Some of the pull-tab books I’ve seen are also lots of fun, but much more fragile.

Gotta kid who won’t sit still for storytime? Try Maisy – the illustrations are always charming, the text is always simple, and with flaps, pulls and dozens of titles to choose from, there’s bound to be something your little wiggler will enjoy.

So, despite my moniker, I haven’t been blogging much in the way of books. Don’t get me wrong – I love books. My kids love books, my spouse loves books – if we ever manage to get a cat, it’ll probably read, too.

I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do.

Amazon is rife with “so, you want to read a good mystery/kid’s book/slime monster story” categories, so I wasn’t really sure I wanted to do that. That being said, I finally decided that since I tend to be so passionate about books that I love, that I’d recommend those. I’m going to try and categorize them in some kind of useful way and not worry about whether they’re new, old, popular or educational or even dreadful overexposed.

Since both my kids are very visual learners (and very wiggly), I’ve decided to start with “beginner picture books for wiggly kids” and “beginner read alouds for wiggly kids”. For my purposes, picture books are geared for the “hurry up and turn the darn page!” crowd – usually toddlers and preschoolers – and the read alouds are picture intensive books that still tell an actual story that a more visual learner (in our case, a kid with audio processing delays) can keep track of and enjoy. If your child can sit quietly and listen to Beezus and Ramona or Peter Pan and be able to tell you what’s going on, then they’re beyond these books. They’d probably still enjoy them, but they’d be capable of more. My son isn’t – as much as he loves books, he’s only capable of processing and keeping track of so much information per page. Which is to say, while he does fairly well with the beginner Five in a Row books, but is totally unprepared for the Sonlight Core 1 Readers that we just bought.

So for Gabe, we’re focusing on getting better retention and more content out of the read alouds he’s capable of listening to – and I’m going to try reviewing/making a functional list of them as we go.

And for Sophia, I’m going to try to start keeping track of the books that she loves and is wiling to listen to.

Most of all, I’m trying to find and catalogue good books that my kids love. And if you happen to be one of those parents with wiggly kids, or visual kids, or kids with some other developmental impairment, maybe they’ll love them, too.

Rosetta Stone

You’ve probably seen those nifty adds: “Learn a foreign language in just ten easy steps, fifteen minutes a day, while driving in your car, asleep.” And it’s always just so tempting. Dreams of sipping champagne by le Tour Eiffel, snappily summoning the garcon in flawless French; lounging around Tuscany, munching on mozarella and being able say “mo-tza-reLLa” without sounding like an idiot.

Putting aside that even my travel fantasies seem to revolve around food, learning another language makes it seem like you might actually go somewhere one of these days.

This is not to say that I’ve spent any time actually working on a foreign language since I ruined my high school French by too many summer trips to Mexico. (Parle vous frijoles?) But given my latest, best homeschooling mom tip, this might just change.

I’ve been lusting after the Rosetta Stone foreign language software since I first saw it advertised: immersion learning through images, text and sound with no drills or rote memorization. Woot!

Only two things stood in my way: picking a language and the price. (Lo! A topic approaches!) Japanese seemed like the best compromise, since Scott took it high school and we watch about as much tv in Japanese as in English. But since the Rosetta Stone Japanese edition is, oh $300, it seemd a little pricey for a homeschool class for a five year old.

(Yes, yes, I’m getting to the cheap part. Keep your pants on.)

Then my homeschool connections (impressive, huh?) tipped me off to the King County Library system database. Yes; if you go to the main page and look at the top, there it is on a big yellow button to the right of “Library Catalog” – “Databases”. All the books I’ve reserved online and I never even noticed it. Click that, then under the alphabet letters on the next page, click “R” for Rosetta.

And there it is, between Resume Builder and Sammamish Valley News. Dutch, English, Farsi and Portuese – I think there’s 29 in all. Basically, King County has already paid enrollment for an online foreign language class; all you have to provide is a library card, a web browser, and a decent internet connection. Log in, sign up, and then just mosey along at whatever pace your heart desires.

Ah, the wonders of technology.

Now, my title is misleading: this particular deal only works if you live around Seattle and don’t need to mortgage your car to pay off your library fines.

It may not be a trip to Tokyo, but as Grandma K always says, it sure beats a sharp poke in the eye.

I like heavy machinery. I also like competent, intellegent men. I mention this to explain why I was out on the deck a couple of weeks ago, watching my husband competently and intellegently applying a terrifyingly cool stump grinder to seven feet worth of maple stump.

Sexy.

My six-year old was equally impressed. “Wow,” he said, “My dad’s the man.” I stiffled a snorffle. “Really?” “Oh, yeah,” he continued, nodding appreciatively. “He’s the r0xx0r.”

It’s a good thing. Really. All little boys should think their dads are the best . We just need to be a little more careful about including MT references in our witty banter

More heavy equipment. Less l33t.

You know, it’s really always something.

Other people live long, happy lives with only the occasional sniffle to slow them down. *My* family attracts illness and injury like some kind of freak of the week medical magnet. If the black plague were to return, the rats would show up at our house first. Mind you, they’d probably just bite us in the bum, (causing one cheek to swell in an elephatine fashion) and then scamper off snickering to find victims they could take seriously.

I used to be the reigning queen of calamity: plugging u-shape pipe cleaners into electrical outlets; plunging headlong downhill and running face first into a tree; breaking ceiling fan lights with my head while leaping through the air – just minor accidents designed to humiliate me to death.

My sister has taken over the title, however: she broke her leg falling into a Kiva in New Mexico, shot herself in the foot with a pistol, and even gave herself actual brain damage by dropping a stereo on her own head. I broke *my* leg roller skating while running a day camp and just had to sit there under the disco ball passing out ritalin and snack money.

Obviously she’s the winner based on pure damage. But I *am* seven years older no matter how hard she tries, that’s a pretty big lifetime humiliation score to beat.

Now that I have kids and live in a multi-story (i.e., not wheelchair accessible) home, I’ve tried hard to limit myself to upper body damage that doesn’t impede movement. The two screws I still have in my ankle combined with my innate ability to trip over bare floor have pretty much ruled out skiing or skating for the last ten years.

But there’s still those freaking stairs. Arrgh! What were we thinking buying a house with so blankety-blank many staircases?! Granted, my last major stair related accident involved backflipping off the banister at church almost 15 years ago (the broken collar bone wasn’t worth much, but the pervasive legend of ‘the girl who fell down the stairs’ was a major score) but I really should have known better.

sigh

After I crashed into the landing wall and side rolled partially down the next set of stairs I just lay there, thinking that the nasty wrenching and popping sensation seemed dreadfully familiar.

Here again, a normal person would be okay. They’d pull their cellphone out of their pocket and call for help. Of course I had the foresight to misplace mine earlier in the week. A normal person would have their child call Dad on the phone; I couldn’t remember his number. A normal person wouldn’t have an audience; in addition to my kids, I had a set of twin 4 year old girls I’d picked up for a few days.

more of the sighing

It’s always something.

The docs think it’s just a bad sprain, though due to previous damage and a family history of ankle injuries, I’m supposed to keep wearing the franken-boot and use crutches for at least another week. Not too many points for that (though looking like an idiot is worth a few every time I go out).

However. When my best friend’s husband and his 12 year old son showed up about a half hour after the incident to rescue his kids and help out with mine, they got the unestimable pleasure of seeing me after the kids had “taken care” of me. There I sat in my basement (still decorated like a jungle, courtesy of my son’s recent birthday), flopped out on a bright green Google bean bag, foot propped up on a box marked “expedition supplies”, a safari hat on my head, a mickey mouse balloon in my hand, one of his daughter’s crocheted blankets around my shoulders and the other’s pillow under my foot. “Hi,” I said non-chalantly, blushing furiously while I pushed away the sippy cup of milk my son was trying to give me.

Success. Achieved humiliation level:67%.

Oh well, only a couple more weeks to go. Though it’s extra embarrassing coming so soon after “What do you mean she has mono?! She’s been stuck at home with those two kids all winter while her husband’s been down in Mountain View training, and it takes her three months to figure out she has mono?!”

Score another couple of points for me.

And tell my sister to watch out for the rats; they should be coming after her next.

I’ve had a lot of nasty cold medicine in my day. The bottle my dad had the pharmacist mix up special for us leaps to mind (and claws at my memory like a menthol scented wolverine). “Stop your whining,” he’d say, “It’s not that bad.”

Of course it was that bad. It was hit yourself in the head bad. The mere sight of that opaque brown pharmacy bottle induced such panic that we siblings rose up as one and begged our dad not to make us take any more, pleading with him to at least try it before he rendered judgement.

My dad. The man who took such joy in denying us gas station candy bars on the grounds that we’d never had to eat rats and be thankful for them, took a healthy swig and froze. After several seconds of wild twitching he slowly crossed the room and placed the medicine in the back of the cabinet. Way in the back.

It’s a memory that still gives me pleasure to this day.

Of course now I’m the one who has to force the meds down the kids throats. “Oh, be quiet,” I say, “this one’s not that bad. You should have tried the one your Papa made us take when we were kids.”

And then I found the Triaminic “Bubble Gum” flavor. “Oooh, bubble gum,” I thought, “maybe this one won’t be that bad.” I don’t actually go looking for the nastiest medicine available; I’m just lucky that way. I mean, “bubble gum” conjures such happy images of pale pink, mild flavored elixirs. Unfortunately Triaminic shares a slightly different image; something along the lines of ‘gag inducing’ and ‘almost exactly the same color as fake blood’.

Picture, if you will, my shirt, my pants, my carpet, and my snowy white, 500 thread count sheets, all sprayed with blood red syrup. Picture my son, gums and teeth stained red, screaming and choking on his medicine, dripping it all over the room while his frantic efforts to wipe away the mess just smear it all over his face and hands.

Remember Army of Darkness? It was like my son just got a face full of boom stick.

While sitting on my bed.

So much like the first Evil Med, this incredible example of pharmaceutical nastiness is now gone, if not forgotten. I mean, how could I forget such a horrific sight any more than I could forget such a horrific taste?

Besides, I’m still trying to get the stains out of my carpet.

So the other morning at o’dark-hundred my son came wandering in to tell Scott about his latest problem. “Dad,” he said seriously, “I don’t like yogurt in my cereal.” After some investigation it was determined that it wasn’t actually a cooking experiment gone awry – Gabe had grabbed the only milk carton he could reach, the one that said B-U-T-T-E-R-M-I-L-K.

An honest mistake, if more than a little disgusting – all those pricey little Kashi Mighty Bites guys floating around in a pool of goo – but really not his fault.

It’s the Milk Man.

Well, it’s the Milk Man and my insane need to sample everything in every possible combination. You see, we signed up for home milk delivery from Smith Brothers which has been great for convenience but bad for temptation. Whole milk, 2%, 1%, non-fat; buttermilk, yogurt, soy – hundreds of fun to try combinations, conveniently delivered to my front porch once a week.

I never grew up with such extravagence. We had a cow. No really – a big old bossie named Laurie, after my cousin. (Since she and I were the first girls born to the family, Pa named a cow after each of us. I still remember the packages labelled “Cindy - Chuck Roast” in the deep freeze.)

Now, I know – glass gallon jars full of the morning’s milking, with a thick layer of cream rising to the top sound really picturesque.

They sucked.

We had to keep a big metal ladle in there for stirring in the cream and dipping out the milk, and even after you managed to spill milk all over yourself and the counter, you were still left with nasty globs of cream floating around your milk. Raw milk does not taste like the stuff in the plastic jug, and your average 8 year old doesn’t care how “natural” it is any more than they care for gathering happy little brown eggs from a musty old chicken coop.

My parents didn’t care so much about the natural stuff, either; they cared about how much cheaper it was for feeding four hungry kids. Milk for breakfast, lunch and dinner: “Drink up kids – there’s still a half gallon left in the fridge and we need room for the two gallons I’ll get this evening.”

Scott on the other hand, grew up with a Milk Man. (His family also had a Costco membership, a swimming pool and a freezer full of Bagel Bites – hard proof of his decadent, bourgeois childhood, had I needed it.) Needless to say, he got into the milk man groove right away. “Just fill out the order form, Cyn, and when he leaves a bill, just throw the check in the milk box.”

Such luxury! Such indulgence! Happy little boxes of homogenized, hormone free goodness, lined up in my tidy little metal box. No special trips to the grocery store with screaming kids and no cows. I really don’t know why it inspires me to such levels of ordering excess; maybe it’s just the rows of pristine check boxes on the order form. But I remain confident that one day I’ll figure out the magic combination and move beyond the order form and into the land of the standing order.

Maybe then, on that blissful day, my son will have learned to tell the difference between buttermilk and 2%.

Unless 1% is better.