Autumn Canter

Preschool Lesson: Nutrition/Mother's Day 1:3

2012-05-18T22:32:05Z

Notes: A perfect teaching day. Just perfect. I am left feeling sad about not being able to do preschool with the same group next year! The children loved being able to share their favorite healthy foods while sitting in the teacher chair. They also had a great deal of fun playing Bingo. I have never had a day better than this one teaching this group of children.

Nutrition/Mother's Day, Lesson One

Monday, May 14th

1. Circle Time

-Hello Song

-Calendar

· Does anyone know what month it is?

· Does anyone know what day of the week it is?

· Count Days (Job)

· Season (Job)

· Weather (Job)

-Count days of preschool (Job)

-Review schedule for the day

-Review letters (B, A, G, F, S, D, H, C, P, Th, O, T, Y, U, N, Z, J, D, Ch, L,Q, R, M, E, I, K, V, W, X)

· Have letters written on cards. Review what is what, big/capital and little/lowercase and sounds

· Say letter and toss ball to student. When they get the ball they must make the sound or have students think of a word that starts with that letter. (optional)

-Introduce letter of the week (N) by making sound/ sharing picture with something letter starts with

· "Does anyone know what letter blend that is?" Open the mystery bag and look at letter blend.

Talk about what it looks like, what words start with it, and the sounds it makes.
Can anyone think of words that start with the letter "N" sound?
Can anyone write it in the air with their finger wand?

-Introduce Topic, Nutrition

· -Morning Message: Today we are learning about nutrition. Nutrition means eating healthy foods. What do you eat to stay healthy?

Read message out loud while pointing to works. (directionality)
Discuss any of the following: capitalization, punctuation, spacing between words.
Have each student come up and find a word by the sound.
Have student come up and point to each letter while we read it aloud as a class.
Take turns answering the question asked in the message: What do you eat to stay healthy?

· Writing together

o Have students take turns coming up and tracing over one letter of the word "nutrition". Have them tell everyone what letter they are doing and the sound it makes. Reinforced that all letters are written from the top to the bottom.

2. Reading time

Read, You Are What You Eat by Sharon Gordon
Ask, "Should we eat a lot of sweet foods and snacks?" (cavities, not all food gives you the same nutrients. Some foods are super foods that make you super strong: share super food chart with class and refer back to food pyramid)
Ask, "What is you favorite food to eat?"
Ask, "What is a fruit?" and "What is a vegetable?" (examples of each)
Read, I Can Eat a Rainbow by Annabel Karmel
Ask, "What are some healthy food?" and "What are some unhealthy foods?"

2. Finding Healthy Foods Activity

At the table, have students sort through grocery store adds to find pictures of healthy foods they like to eat. Students will glue these pictures to a piece of construction paper.
When they are done, students will share their healthy foods with the class.

3. Reading time

· Read: Healthy Food for Dylan by Julie Fogliano

o Mention author and illustrator in review

o Ask, "Do you like to try new foods? Or is it hard to do?"

o Ask, "What foods do you hate to eat the most?"

o Tell, "Now let's try to make our own silly faces out of healthy foods!"

4. Snack (silly face design)

5. Reading time

· Read: Badger's Fancy Meal by Keiko Kaska

6. Nutrition Bingo

Objective: To learn how to play Bingo and learn the names of many different kinds of fruits and vegetables.

Lesson Plan:

· Before the day of the lesson cut out many different kinds of fruits and vegetables out of magazine pictures and glue them onto a piece of construction paper to make a Bingo card. Make enough cards for the number of children in your class. If possible have these cards laminated so you can use them often.

· Then make up cards with names of all the fruits and vegetables you used on your Bingo cards for the caller to call out. When a child gets 3 or four in a row they call Bingo.

· You might want to have stickers as prizes or nothing at all. The kids really enjoy this and they can learn new fruits or vegetables if you put pictures of unusual fruits of vegetables such as eggplants and Kiwi.

7. Math

· Review numbers out of order of flashcards, calling on students to id number.

Healthy Foods Counting
Create sheet and have students glue fruits and vegetables to complete word problems.

2 + 3 = 5

Picture of 2 carrots + picture of 3 carrots = students can glue on 5 carrots

8. Reading and Song

Read, Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson
Song:

I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor

9. Conclusion

· Ask, "What do you eat to be healthy?"

Homework:
Goodbye Song!

Over time, a reflection

2012-05-17T12:27:17Z

Homeschooling River, which is essentially what I do albeit with a group of peers, is hardly the local norm. Here is the suburbs of Baltimore most everyone I know sends their children to a preschool. Preschool wasn't always the trend. In fact, from what I garner from friends, unless they went to a preschool through a church (like I did) they did not go to preschool at all. In fact, pre-k was in place for students who needed the extra boost of early intervention. This is the purpose that Head Start serves, providing early schooling for children from low income families as well as students with disabilities. Why? I am guessing a correlation between resources and time parents are able to provide to educate their own children. Sadly, the trend is that students from low income families come to school with less skills. I am not saying this is a rule, but a trend. Head Start gives these children a...well--a head start.

I feel our preschool does a lot of good for our sons and we cover a lot of materials--maybe even more than some formal schools. Still, I often feel uneasy. Do we do enough? Am I robbing River of his Head Start? Yes, I have an educational background in teaching but not preschool age. (though I can't stress enough how what I learned in college aids me each and every time I sit down to write a lesson and teach the boys) It's hard to go against the established grain especially when it comes to what society thinks is best for our children.

With another year of preschool looming before River is eligible to start kindergarten, things will be shifting again. The privilege and burden of providing his education this last year is squarely on me. One preschool student is on his way to kindergarten, another is moving and that leaves one other boy whose mom is leaning towards not doing preschool again. My plan is to continue our three day a week teaching mornings, but including Sage. I plan to start writing twice a week lessons for two weeks beginning in June. That means by summers end, I should have 3/4 of the school year roughly drafted. The rest can be done over winter and spring breaks or when I find time. I am also putting him in one or two classes at the local YMCA to keep him social and physical.

After this year, I see the importance of keeping records of River's skills. Thinking back, just off of the top of my head, I can see much improvements in what the students can do. Assessments, that's what I need. This blog has been a reflection of sorts but I need real-deal assessments. Something to do the first day, in the middle and at the end of the school year. Yet another thing to add to my list of things to do!

But let's look at the 2011/2012 school year, shall we? (And we still have a month to go before it ends!)

Here is what I have seen vast improvement in the general skills area (not to include the many subjects we covered that the boys were exposed to):

1. In September the boys couldn't write their names and now they can

2. In September the boys didn't know all their lower case letters, now they know most/all of them

3. In September the boys didn't know their letter sounds, now they know most/all of them

and more improvements from September to now (dependent on skill level by students, of course)...

4. They have begun to sound out words

5. They can now recognize periods and questions marks in sentences.

6. They recognize most/all of the number 1-10

7. They can count by tens up to 70.

8. They have begun to count backwards from 10-1

8. They know most/all the months of the year

9. They know most/all the days of the week

10. They can cut with scissors

11. They understand basic addition and subtraction (when verbalized or pictured)

12. They can consistently count objects in a series up to or beyond 30.

13. Learned the terminology uppercase and lowercase for letters. (before it was big and baby letters)

14. improved on skills like: raising their hands, taking turns, facing forward, paying attention

15. They understand that ten ones becomes one ten bundle and that this is reflected in the ones place and the tens place on written numbers.

Does that make me feel good about what we do?

Yes, yes it does.

I am saddened that I will probably not be teaching any children beyond my own next year--but I plan to keep things pretty much the same and hope I can home school Sage with a group of other children when she is 3 and 4 years old.

Wednesday: read The Murderer's Daughters

2012-05-16T17:21:35Z

This is another recommendation from friend, Heather. It was a pretty good book but it gave me massive anxiety. Too many flashbacks to my own drunk father threatening violence and my visits to see him when he was in jail. The older daughter would rather cut her father out of her life and tries to ignore any thoughts of him. She is an overachiever. I can relate to her as well as the younger daughter who visits her father, tries to keep him happy, and fears him being angry. It made me think of Bryan and I in so many ways, subtly true--but there. And these girls have it so, so much worse. But the end is happy enough and the writing is well done.

You can give it a go. It's a pretty good read.

Together

2012-05-15T18:31:08Z

From a letter by John Adams to his future wife, Abigail Adams:

My soul and body have both been thrown into disorder by your absence, and a month or two more would make me the most insufferable cynic in the world. I see nothing but faults, follies, frailties and defects in anybody lately, People have lost all their good properties and I my justice or discernment.

But you who have always softened and warmed my heart, shall restore my benevolence as well as my health and tranquility of mind. You shall polish and refine my sentiments of life and manners, banish all the unsocial and ill natured particles in my composition, and form me to that happy temper that can reconcile a quick discernment with a perfect candor.

Isn't that what a partnership should be? We should improve upon each other, not complete the other. Be strong when the other is weakened. Cheerful when the other is low. We should challenge the other to learn and improve. We should be the pole our partner can lean upon as they struggle to regain their equilibrium.

The longer I am living so closely with another, I learn how much I consider him first and foremost my dear friend before he is anything else.

I am very fortunate in my chosen life partner.

And if we ever part ways, he will always be my friend.

Tidbits

2012-05-14T19:27:28Z

Saturday afternoon and two kids at the park. The sun is bright and the weather warm. Brand new summer sets of clothes and hats to shade their faces. The smell of sunblock on their already tanning skin.

And then came the dirt. Sage plowing through the dry mud with her hands. River looking at me like, Is this okay with you? And sometimes you just need to let go. As crowds of people at Lacrosse games and birthday parties and joggers passed my two playing in dust--most smile and some might think, I would never let my kids do that. Clothes are easy to wash and children too for that matter. They abandoned the playground equipment for a brief scramble on a set of empty bleachers and left that for a long, uninterrupted dust bath.

From the moment we entered the park, crossing the little bridge over a sparkling creek--I wanted to get them in the water. I remembered wading in creeks when I was young and dunking in streams. Spending all afternoon under the rust colored bridge, soaked, cold, bikes in a tangle but thriving. It was spring and we were young. I wondered when a good wade in the water began to look like a chore. A--wet bodies, clothes, possibility of falls, bruises, cuts...hassle.

I thought about making meaningful memories for my kids and the little flare of that looks fun that I surpressed as I crossed the boards. I threw it all to the wind. With only one clean diaper, on the baby, I took it off her and let her go in only in her clothes. With only one change of clothes, on the boy, I let him in. They dry. Car seats dry. We slithered down a muddy bank and back up to clean our feet with a slide in the grass. We splashed and laughed and yes, got wet and yes, got even dirtier.

Home to an early bubble bath, a change of clothes and being grateful that I listened to the little voice for once.

Legacy of mothers

2012-05-12T00:23:56Z

My great grandmother sailed over from Italy in the early 1900's at age sixteen. She went on to marry and raise six children. Her husband passed when her youngest, my Grandmother, was very young. I remember Nonny best sitting in her rocker by the stove of the small apartment where she raised her family. She was diminutive and white haired. Upon entering, we first paid homage to her.

My Grandmother had three children. My Uncle Gus, my Uncle Peter and my mother. Her husband died when my mother was four. She worked at a bank and raised her children with her mother in the same apartment where she herself had grown up.

It wasn't till I was grown that I realized how matriarchal my family is. Run and ruled by strong women, vivacious women, proud women. The men most often faded into the background or around the fringes.

While my father broke the chain of single mothers (for most of my childhood, that is), he wasn't the best of partners. I've written about his alcholism and drug abuse. Maybe not as much about the fact that he was an affectionate and often kind father, albiet inconsistint and volatile.

As her mother before her and grandmother before that, my mother is the backbone of our family. Some of my ealiest memories involve her taking me and my brother into the woods to crush mushrooms under our feet releasing a spum of spores and/or mush. I remember walking rings around a large tractor tire in the yard and her small hands on the steering wheel of the car.

She was never cowed by my father. Not that I can remember. Even at a young age, I was proud of her fire. She'd yell and curse and the whole five foot two inch length of her would seem to grow to giant proportions. She didn't wear makeup or style her hair, were push up bras, or formal clothes but she was sexy and strong. I always liked that about her. She was confident in her skin and her confidence taught me confidence.

When I was a teenager, she was breaking boards in the local martial arts studio with her up swung foot and mighty fists. I always knew that my mother would go to extreme lengths, even death, to protect my life. If a ten foot ogre appeared in the street and scooped me up ready to grind me into pulp, I know she'd throw herself at it and do some kind of damage. Maybe just to its big toe, but I know she'd try.

She gave me The Lord of The Rings in fourth grade and Carrie in fifth. She fed my love of reading like small bits of kindling into an infant fire. And sometimes, when I had my friends over, we'd put on her old records and she'd dance with us in the living room. She was old, as all parents are old to their children, but she was always young too. She didn't let being a mother rob her of her love of her body or herself. She didn't let society grind her down into a "proper" woman. She always seemed amused by my hormonal teenage years, urging me to further independence ("Go out! Get your eyebrow pierced or something!") instead of trying to restrain me as so many of my friends' parents did to them.

Though she was raised Catholic and gave my brother and I a chance at religious education, she never pressured me to believe in anything. She never judged if I said I didn't and she still doesn't.

What gifts has your mother given you?

Can you see them when you look in the mirror--as I can?

I'm determined and fierce.

Thank you, mom.

I'm proud and unashamed.

Thank you, mom.

Today I looked down at my sleeping daughter in my arms after I pried her sucking lips from my breast. Her straight brows and long curling lashes. The round slope of her cheek and her dark curls. I saw myself in my mother's arms, my mother in her mother's arms, her mother in her mother's arms and a line of mothers that stretch across the Atlantic and back and back in time.

Happy Mother's Day to me and to you.

Wednesday: read Women of the Silk

2012-05-09T19:20:07Z

Another historical fiction because that seems to be my go-to these days. Even when the story is only alright, I still end up learning a lot of things I didn't know before I cracked the cover.

This particular book takes place in China before and during the communist revolution. Women had few options, but could avoid marriage and child rearing by joining a sisterhood of silk factory workers. Like marriage, girls had to tie themselves to the sisterhood in order to enter it for life. The book brings together a girl from a privileged, westernized family who has fallen on hard times and the daughter of a poor farmer. In the sisterhood they both thrive and see how they are marginalized by society for being unmarried, independent women earning a wage.

While not a amazing story, the content is enjoyable. Together it makes an easy, fast read which you will walk away from knowing a few more things about the female run silk factories in China during this time period.

Four years, five months

2012-05-08T19:42:45Z

Dear River,

Overall this past month you've been an angel. You have finally really gotten the connection that behaving gets you rewards. In awe you said something along the lines of, "If I listen to you, I get to do fun things!" This is where I mimed slapping my palm against my forehead and a dramatic fall to the ground. It's been four years and change and you finally get it! And maybe this connection, maybe not, has gotten you to finally spend most nights in your bed. You finished your sticker cart and by doing so earned a toy of your choice: a pokemon that reverses into a poke ball. Now you are earning a razor scooter by doing chores. Some days you are extremely helpful. You especially like helping me take out the recycling. You also clear the table after dinner and pick up your toys to earn a sticker a day.

You are also far more helpful with Sage. I catch you noticing she wants a drink before I can help her. You take out her water, open the top and hand it to her. You try to help her get her shoes on. You hold her hand for me and usually are very good about sharing with her. When we took you out to see a movie without Sage, you were insistent that she should go too and that she wanted to be with you. She idolizes you. Doing or trying everything you do. This includes pooping in the toilet. I am considering having you potty train her. Why not? I think if she had to choose between us, she would rather listen to you anyway.

This past month you had a 24 hour stomach bug and woke up to vomit. Then you vomited again in the toilet. This made me crack up when Daddy told me. I can remember your Uncle Bryan's inability to ever make it to the toilet and Grandma screaming at him for vomiting on the floor instead of even trying to run for the toilet. And here you are, first stomach bug, and you vomited in the toilet. Daddy told me the following: when you saw the vomit "It looks like poop! What's wrong with me? Why am I pooping from my mouth?"

You've had a lot of questions about God and what other people believe and what happens when you die. I am never sure what to tell you or how much is too much. I don't want to hammer my beliefs down your throat nor do I want you to feel confused about the major world religions. Still, you are very young. So, I decied that I will teach you my views through storytelling. I began by drawing a ying/yang and explaining how men and woman are different but that together they make a whole circle. That each man has some woman in him and each woman some man. Then you had great fun coloring your own yin and yang pictures. Then I explained that most people think God is a boy but that God, like the circle, was a bit of each. How God is in everything, including us, but that we can not see God. That when we die, the part in our heads that makes us who we are, will not. That this part will return to God and our body will become part of the earth, trees, and world around us.

"Why can't I see God?, you asked.

"Can you see love?" I questioned you holding out my hands. "Can you see my love for you here in my hands?"

"No!" you said laughing.

"Well, God is love. That is why you can't see him."

"Him/Her mommy. God is both."

And I smiled. Because even though I slip up and say He (conditioned as I am), I want you to think differently. Whatever the divine is or where it dwells--that is your journey to discover on your own, but as long as I can instill an equal reverence of the female and the male sides of divinity--I will consider my job well done.

You want to be baptized. Or so you expressed when you heard me talking about it to a friend. I imagine taking you out in nature to a stream and baptizing you with my own hands. Not to wash away sins, but to wash the beauty of the world into you. I imagine saying something along the lines of, "This is water--and all life needs it. You are a part of that life. Live in it consciously, kindly, with an endless thirst for knowledge. Live from your heart and do good in this world. When you do wrong, learn from it and move forward. I have faith in the divinity that lives within you. As your mother, daughter of the great mother who holds us all--I give you to the world."

And maybe, some day, I will. But not yet River, for now you are firmly in my world and I savor every moment sharing these days with you.

Love,

Mommy

Feline Friday: photo bomb!

2012-05-04T23:43:31Z

Precipice

2012-05-04T02:12:47Z

It's always been there--like fault lines.

Nature--

I used to run into the woods with my dog and let myself sink into deep contentment. I've always found peace in nature. There was a moment when I walked around the curve of a road and the wind picked up and sent the new leaves into a gentle hum. I felt the wind blow through me and a rightness settle in my gut. I felt very very happy. It was one of my happiest moments: I was alone, on a road, listening, and it was unexpected but I think about it still.

The Herd--

I've always needed the comfort of female friends. They have always been cathartic and necessarily. Jason says women need validation and that is true. I think women need each other in a primal way. I think women are herd animals. I think that a sisterhood is vital for the female soul and I think without it we are like the loan herd animal: overly vulnerable, insecure, lonely. I would go so far to theorize that women out there that prefer the company of men and are uncomfortable around other women, are denying something in themselves and cut off from their power. I think they are heavily repressed and afraid of their own primal emotion. Emotion is the core of what makes us women. The thing men have scoffed at us for: for being weepy, emotional, bitchy, illogical. But who made these attributes negative? They just are. They are what women are. They aren't wrong. But these thoughts, preferring male ways of functioning and being, are so strongly alive in our collective minds that we women get angry at ourselves, suppress ourselves, and judge ourselves faulty for being what we are.

The Rebellion--

I have continually seen that something was wrong in the church. Why couldn't I be a priest? Why was God referred to as He only? Why was menstruation and painful childbirth a curse? As I grew older, these questions made me more and more discontent. I proclaimed that I didn't believe in an asshole God who was vindictive and cruel, judgmental and distant. I tried protestant religions and was so thrilled with there was a woman pastor. But even there, I had a silent voice of rebellion. I have always wanted a fit for my spirituality and could never find it.

Before I was pregnant, I began an awakening of sorts. Something that had been happening in fits and starts but took a sudden dumping of knowledge and history to truly ignite. It was like knowing something was missing but not knowing the name of it. I'd sing in church and get washed under the comfort of unity and the good message and then find myself glaring at the stained glass windows and suppressing the urge to shout out something I disagreed with. Then there was River. The day I first felt the nausea of pregnancy, truly felt pregnant, I went to a festival that was selling pagan crafts. I was looking for something unique to buy my mother. I settled on a quilted square of a tree and a plate that had a moon and the words "Blessed Be" and then, as the urge to sleep and vomit suddenly slapped me in a tight fist, I bought a goddess necklace by a quick compulsion. A silver woman with her arms raised and melded and a gold spiral in her belly (in her womb, I would later learn. The figurative labyrinth we all find our way through from birth to death).

And in many ways, my awakening went into hibernation that day. I went on to experience birth with no medication-- to feel its power, wonder and pain. I nursed my son and loved him in a way I've never loved anything else before. But I let that love and motherhood swallow me whole. I was in a developmental null. A void where I stopped seeing, questioning or seeking to fill the other void in me: the one referred to as the feminine wound. The place a female divinity should reside. The power I had touched on in the peace I found in nature and the comfort I felt in as part of a herd of women.

Motherhood wasn't a total halt to my development. It had liberated my body and form from the status quo. I was no longer ashamed or alarmed by what my body could do. I freely exposed my breasts for my son. I spoke openly about my vagina and the crazy, amazing things it did to birth my child. I gained a lot of weight and had to shift my mind away from the "feminist ideal" of thin and fit and perfect. So even this fork in my spiritual development taught me important lessons.

Seeking has been there all along. I've always dismissed the ideas of heaven and hell. I've always been more earthy. I've found divinity in a deep contemplation of a person's features and the complexity of a leaf. I've always felt we put too much shame in the human form and sexuality. I've never really completely bought into the ideas of marriage. A lot of what makes me, me came from my own mother: comfortable in her own skin, fierce when needed, determined. She never tried to make me proper or good or what a woman should be (in a traditional sense). Now it continues with my own daughter.I find myself on fire. I want to change to develop. I want my daughter to never, for a moment, wish she had been born a boy.

When Sage was born, I wasn't overcome with maternal love. Yes, I loved her but I wasn't buried under it as I had been with River. She gave me a new deep connection with all the women who had come before me. I was a daughter with a daughter--a link in a chain.

Now I feel myself on a precipice and I tell you honestly, that I'm afraid. Because going against the grain is scary and I don't know anyone else around me here who feels like she's being smothered by a sock. Yes, like I have a giant sock over my entire body and I'm trying to twist my way out of it.

Thankfully, Jason was there to listen to me struggle with my anger and depression, my excitement and endless babbling about everything I am reading. From Taoism, Buddhism and the Sacred Feminine.

The urge to find out more comes from my gut-the place I have always felt my happiest moments and my fiercest certainties before I start second guessing and dismissing myself.

I think, for this, it is just something I have to continue on my own.

For now~

Wednesday: read 117 Days Adrift

2012-05-02T18:14:53Z

Another book about being lost at sea! I think I have developed a fear towards boating on the ocean after three books about people barely surviving months living in a raft. In this novel a married coupon fulfills a life long dream of having a boat built and sailing around the world. Everything is going well until they are rammed by a whale (just like in The Heart of the Sea!) They are able to leave their ship before it sinks with enough supplies to keep them alive on board their raft for three months lost at sea.

The memoir is written by the husband and wife who take turns telling to their story.

Thanks, Adventure Mom (a.k.a. my neighbor) for passing this one on to me.

Our local library

2012-05-02T02:11:38Z

We love our local library. At any given time, I have an average of 60 books checked out. We usually go to the library once a week with me toting a huge bag of books that I am sure will split open and/or pull a muscle in my back. Each child gets to pick their own books while I hunt around for some other things for them. Sometimes I have a heaping tower of holds I requested for a preschool topic I will be teaching. Once in a while there are even some novels for me. I always end up with another full bag of books even though I swore I would get less this time around.

Afterwards we play a bit with the library toys or sit in the comfy over-sized rocker to read one book each from our bag. Sometimes we even end up there during story time and stay for that.

Our local library is a great resource for all of us. There are a limitless amount of books, always new ones too, for us to enjoy. I can go online to browse through their books and order them from my home. These books are then shelved and waiting for me to arrive. It's a god-send when I can't hunt the shelves for things I need and keep track of two young children. I can also renew my books online. The system here in Baltimore is so exciting to me. I can even check out all the books myself with a touch screen when we're ready to leave.

Some of my earliest memories are being in the basement of a small town library, perched on a hard wooden bench as my mother read Bryan and I the palm sized books by Beatrice Potter. In my home town an old carriage house was home to our local library. I had my own card and would walk down with the dog. I had my card number memorized. It was 7889 and I stopped showing them the card and just told them my number. When I entered high school, they basically told me to get my books at the school and leave the ones there for younger children who didn't have the high school library! In Oneonta, while the library was bigger, it was still small. If I wanted to reserved a book from a sister library, I had to fill out a card and hand it to the librarian. Of course, I didn't use that library at all until I moved off campus and was an actual resident of the town. While my university library was more technology savvy, it didn't house fiction. I spent all my extra cash, when in school, buying most of the books I own today.

Maybe now you better understand how much I love Baltimore's library system. I haven't bought many books since living here as, 98% of the time, I can get it from the library!

My children have had hundreds of books read to them and reading to them doesn't get old for me. I am just as excited to crack open a new picture book as they are to listen to them. They know asking me to read a book is a sure fire way to get me away from whatever I am doing, plop them in my lap and spend time together.

Reading to your children and visiting your local library are some of the best things you can do to help your children as future readers and writers. (and you thought you had to spend all that money to send them to preschool, ha!) It's so easy to read to your child and it's free to take 60 books out of the library at one time!

Stop by your local library today and give this amazing resource some love.

We love you Baltimore Libraries. We really, really do.

Twenty months

2012-04-30T18:11:59Z

Dear Sage,

Here we are only four months away from your second birthday and you've finally come into toddler-hood full swing. Tantrums off and on all day, saying "mine", refusing to listen, running away, fighting diaper changes and clothing changes, and refusing to eat what you are given. It came a bit later than the toughest time with River (the pre-twos) and I know it will eventually pass. We'll find a groove, slide out of it, and then balance again. You are happiest when outdoors exploring and borderline miserable when inside our home. Bored with all your toys, you want interaction. When you aren't barging in on whatever River is trying to do, you are demanding I read book after book to you. The peace of our family is often broken by River yelling, "Mom! Sage is--" and your angry crying which usually involves you running away and facing a wall or chasing me around screaming. You and River play in small bursts before we go back to the previous sentence. He's frustrated or you are. Usually you are crying. So far, thanks be, you haven't begun hitting. River is on his way to sainthood with how calmly he usually manages you. It helps that you are such a challenge. It makes him look like an angel. I dread the day you guys team up against me!

You still love songs and are happy to watch children's songs on youtube. I like to sing to you kids. We play London Bridge a bit differently around here. You two run around me and then I snatch you into my lap. Well, we were playing this game when you got excited and ran away. You returned with a piggy bank toy which sings a song about dropping the coins into her and another song between oinks. You pushed her nose until one of the songs sang and then started running around me. Then it dawned on me. She was singing to the tune of London Bridge! I'd never noticed, but you had. You have an ear for music! Something you must get from your father who is an auditory learning. I'll keep flaunting my ability to hold a tune better than him, but music itself has never been my favorite. I do love to sing and so do you. Now you try your hardest to sing along to "Baby Beluga" with me.

I try introducing signs now and then. I taught you to sign for more after only three attempts, but then you began to say it. "More, cookies". So now I am working on the sign for please. You sometimes use it with one hand clawing insanely at your chest. You speak quite a bit now. Yesterday you escorted Daddy out the door by saying "Bye Bye, Daddy. Go Go Go. Door!" And you bodily pushed him out the door and slammed it behind him. This morning we had a broken conversation about where Daddy was in the morning. "Where Daddy?" "In River's room sleeping." "Daddy work?" "No, Daddy's sleeping in River's room." and then I had to drag you away from door you were banging on screaming for him. When we read simple books you identify most of the pictures. If you are unsure of a word, you say it and then look at me to confirm. This happens with fruit. Everything fruit was a banana last month. Now you know apple and banana. We're working on oranges. You know strawberries and berries and more food words than I assume most twenty month olds know. You are quick to accuse someone of being "messy", you say dirty diapers are "nasty" and you have begun jumping in guilt if I snap a "no!" at you when you know you are doing something you shouldn't. "My papi" you tell me when I try to take you pacifier. Your favorite color is surely yellow since it is the only one you know and talk about and point out. (and you say it correctly. Both River and his friend couldn't say yellow correctly for years!) The other day you said "green" and pointed at grass.

You are still using the potty. Some days you won't pee in it at all. Some days you pee three times in the potty. You know when you are peeing in it and that's a good start. I assume the transition to the potty won't be so weird once we get to that point especially since you already try to put on your brother's underwear. You copy everything he does. Naughty things too. If he has yogurt, you want it--even if you won't eat it. If he had on socks, you must get socks. It gets tedious after awhile but is very very sweet.

You are such a fangirl about things you love. If you see a beluga picture, you scream shrilly and run over. When you see my breasts as I change, same response. You now call them "mursies" and will ask for "mursies. Mommy mursies" and "other mursie". You point our your own nipples. If you catch sight of my naked breast, you scream, dance in place, run over chanting "Mursies. Mommy mursies." and then insist I bend down so you can lay a hand on my breast. As if to say hello. I find it adorable. I couldn't imagine not having a nursing toddler. It just seems so right that little ones get at least two years of breast milk. You show no signs of wanting to ween.

You have begun to drag out one of my old baby blankets and a stuffed monkey you have taken a fancy too whenever you are tired or what a snuggle. "Blanket. Monkey," you tell me. I wrap you and the monkey together in course rainbow yarn that once wrapped me. Then I hold you close and sing. You have grown so much this past month. You are looking two years old and photos from your first birthday seem so very long ago. There is something wondrous about watching you grow, not lessened by having seen your brother do the things you do just a few years before. Even in the midst of hard days (and there have been a lot this month) when I feel exhausted, bored, and trapped--I continue to marvel. The world unfolds for you, new and wondrous, and your smile brings back that magic to me.

Love,

Mommy

P.S. you insist on keeping the hood up on all you jackets!

Feline Friday: kitty-back

2012-04-27T18:34:06Z

She really loves him.

but not the human paparazzi

The token female, the jar, the fist I place on my gut that says, "I feel it here"

2012-04-25T18:39:35Z

We grow in fits and starts.

When I was a little girl I made note that most of the heroes were male. From Peter Pan to the Ghost Busters. From King Author to Captain Planet. If there were female heroes, they always numbered at least one less on the team than their male counterparts. I went through a stage of wishing I could have been born a boy--if only be be stronger, braver, the hero of my tale.

Last night I questioned Jason. Are some people just born more rebellions and less content to follow?

We didn't know.

I have been trying again and again to fit myself into the jar. The jar of society that says what is and should be. I have to admit that I long for the jar. I sometimes, painfully long to be included in a blind following of faith. To be part of the fold and content and sure and approved of. To have walls around me to make my boundaries.

I have even been told that I don't need to swallow a religion whole. I can disagree with parts and still be a part of the church.

But that isn't so. Not for me. I rolled those words around in my palms again and again and again. I wanted for them to be true. But I can't believe in a part of something when so many parts of it suck. It is or it isn't. Religion is a shoe that just doesn't fit my foot. It pinches. But worse--

I know my truths in my gut. I can put my fist there--to my center--and know with a sure rightness where I belong, what I believe, what I feel is good, right, the truth.

I often second guess. I study. I read and read and read. I try to understand. I question.

Where are the women in this story?

Where are the women in this group?

Who has the power here?

I hold a high heel in my hand and then I try it on my foot. No matter how I think I should feel about the high heel ( harmless little shoe)--it feels like a chain. It feels like foot binding, a corset, menstruation being filthy, breastfeeding being obscene. Geeze, it's just a shoe. I'm sure lots of women enjoy wearing heels. The other voice says, they bind, they cripple, and if the zombies came, bitch would loose those heels and fast. Where are men's heels? Why is 3/4 of the shoe store women's shoes? Why are 3/4 of the clothing stores, women's clothes? Why are we taught to give such a shit about our appearance?

I'm angry and despairing by turns. I remember my awakening when I first learned to see the ways patriarcy have seeped into all our perceptions. I was so insanely angry. I'm not that angry now. I'm just, tired. I'm tired of seeing women around me bound by traditions that supress their sextuality and self. I'm tired of women being servants to men and children at the detriment of their own needs, and I'm tired of doing it myself. Of feeling guilty when I go against the established grain, of second guessing, of needing validation and reassurance that it is okay to be angry, think differently, go out on my own, want and need...

The last week I've been in a stupor and I feel like I am slowly pulling myself out of it one grip after another.

I feel like I should burn a bra (if I actually wore any). Or maybe punch a dude in the face, but tradition isn't only men's fault.

I think of the many depressed women I've known. I spread my hands to flat palms facing skyward as if to cup them there in miniature. The many, numerous women chafing against the walls of life itself. And what have they typically been, these restless ones? Hurt? Angry? Intelligent, yes--that's for sure. It's the rebellious ones I've always been drawn to. The women like me. We find fault in ourselves and in others. But mostly, the bulk of our discontent--I really think--has been the traditions that hold men in higher value and male thought, and male function, and a male God. It pisses us off: the way we bind ourselves. The ignorance of not seeing until being yanked by the hand our of the status quo. We know something isn't quite right, but what is it? What is it?

It's subtle, but it's there.

How do I teach my children otherwise?

How do I raise my daughter better than myself?

How do I pull the broken record from my head?

How did the female divine become erased from our history? How, when we, women, are the ones who grow human life in our bodies and nurture it at our breasts.

" When the priest held out the host and said, "This is my body, given for you." not once did I recognize that it is woman in the act of breastfeeding who most truly embody these words and who are also most excluded from ritually saying them."

-author, Sue Monk Kidd.