crooked house

Vivi Models

We got this fancy dress at the Giant Baby and Children's Sale last Saturday for 4 bucks and it may very well have been the best 4 bucks we have ever spent. Vivi has worn it pretty much every day since then. This is the selection of jewelry she almost always wears with it. The pony bandaid is a deliberate choice.  She asked me to take pictures of her in this outfit today. The pursed lip thing is something I'm afraid she picked up from me when I look in the mirror.

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This is one of her more artistic shots. When she viewed this photo, she expressed displeasure about the slightly rolled sock so please keep that in mind when judging the styling here.

Anguish.

During the shoot, she inexplicably ran to get a comb, which she matter-of-factly inserted in the keyhole and proceeded to pose next to. During further discussion I gleaned it is supposed to be Alice's key.

Fiddling dramatically with the "key."

Pose with light switch.

Solitude.

A slightly Toulouse Lautrec effect.

Somebody That I Used to Know: A Song We Now All Know All Too Well

So this Goyte "Somebody That I Used to Know" song and the Walk Off the Earth cover video are everywhere and those of us with kids are particularly familiar with both of them. (We happen to know a two-year-old who immediately dons a suffering expression and begins singing ALL THE WORDS every time it comes on, which is often. Hi Eden!) The parents of the kids featured below videotaped some of the many, many, many times the song was requested by them during car rides.

 

A Dangerous Maze and the Common Sense Media "Unwatching" Contest

I never should've let Luke watch Marie Antoinette as such an impressionable age.

Common Sense Media is asking for your stories of moments when you wish your child hadn't seen something on television, in a movie, or online. I shared the story of my own horrible moment like that here. Please do go read it and if you like it, vote for me! Or share your own and vote for yourself. (I did. You can win a $500 Amazon gift card!)

Fairy Door

There are a couple of trees in our yard just crying out for this Fairy Door. You can buy the accessories -- the little windows with the flower boxes and the lantern, which LIGHTS UP AT DUSK AND TURNS OFF AT DAWN -- but I'm wondering if they're overkill. I should've ordered this for Easter but I didn't and now May Day is tomorrow. Perhaps for the summer solstice? (Also, don't you think "Fairy Door" would be the perfect name for a gay bar?)

Are You My Mother? Maud Interviews Alison Bechdel

Can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir (is that a thing?) about her relationship with her mother. Maud Newton talks to her about it in this really intriguing interview.

AB: One of my earliest, most powerful memories of my mother is playing this game where I would be a crippled child like the kids I would see at the orthopedic wing of the hospital when I would go to get my fallen arches checked up on. I was just fascinated with these children, with their external signs of disability, their crutches and braces and big shoes. There was something about that that I needed to reenact, and my mother entered into that imaginary space so willingly with me and in such an encouraging way. Even though I knew there was something weird about having this fantasy about disabled children, she didn't sensor it. She encouraged me to go with it, and I feel like she probably did that with me in lots of imaginary games as a kid but for some reason this is the one that I remember the most vividly. And I speculate in the book that it's because it was a fantasy that she shared to a certain extent as well.

 

BNR: And when your OCD was making it really difficult to keep the diary, your mom would write down your entries. I remember that from Fun Home, too, and both times it gave me chills. The devotion implicit in it.

 

AB: Oh my God, that was another pivotal moment. She would sit there and write down everything I said. It was amazing. It also becomes weirdly this template for my relationship later with therapists, other women who would sit there and take down notes on what I was saying.

Lego for Girls

The Ivy on her memories of playing with Lego and the new Lego stuff targeted at girls. What she said.

Dreams of Riches

Grampa: Steph, how does it feel to be rich?

Steph (puzzled): What do you mean?

Grampa (laughing): Last night I dreamed you won the lottery.

Steph: Oh wow, I hope your dream comes true. Wouldn't that be nice, Sylvie, if we were all rich?

Sylvie: Grampa have bad dream? Like my dream treasure cat?

Steph: No, honey, Grampa had a good dream. Not a nightmare, like your bad dream about the Cheshire cat [from Alice in Wonderland]. He dreamed we were rich!

Sylvie: That bad dream.

Steph: No, it's a good dream! I was rich and Daddy was rich and Lukie was rich and Vivi was rich!

Sylvie (looks appalled and insulted, screeches at the top of her lungs): I NOT A WITCH! (bursts into tears.)

Beckett's Fail Better

Although this is the finished print, if I were still teaching the first grade, I think I'd make up similar work sheets for my class to complete. They'd make a fun display. (See also Beckett for Babies, one of my own failure, of which there are many.)

Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies

Nathalie Foy recommended  1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up so we recently borrowed it from the library. Of course a lot of the books in it are familiar classic titles but it has suggested a few treasures that are completely new to us. Else-Marie and Her Seven Little Daddies is one of them. It cracks me up. It's like Heather Has Two Mommies but with a sense of humour.

Heather Has Two Mommies was, I believe, the first children's picture book to openly address gay and lesbian-parented families. Even though Two Mommies author Leslea Newman grew up in a Jewish community, she never saw  Jewish families on television or in picture books and so felt that her family was somehow "wrong." Her book, which sparked a controversy when it first came out, was an effort to make a difference for this emerging minority of children.

Seven Little Daddies is a sort of  blanket version of Two Mommies, covering all minorities precisely because its fantastical premise doesn't apply to any particular real-life one -- unless of course there is an actual polyandrous subculture involving little people in Sweden, where the author Pija Lindenbaum is from.

In the book, Else-Marie is alarmed by the fact that her seven little daddies are going to pick her up from school instead of her mother. She is worried that other people will think her family is strange -- but of course everything turns out just fine in the end.

This is my favourite illustration, which is accompanied by the text: "I sigh and lean my head against my mother's shoulder. Isn't it lucky that my daddies are so little that we can all fit in my mom's lap?"

Miss Suzy Teaches Us to Love Squirrels

We got the best present in the mail today from our dear friend ee. It seems she read about our recent squirrel fiasco and so decided to send us one of her favourite books when she was a little girl -- Miss Suzy. Written by Miriam Young and illustrated by Arnold Lobel, it tells the story of a little grey  squirrel who gets chased out of her treetop home by a band of marauding red squirrels. So Miss Suzy gets into the attic of a dilapidated old house and takes up residence in a charming dollhouse she finds there. She discovers five toy soldiers in a box, who move into the dollhouse with her in a kind of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves situation. She looks after them through the long winter and then, in return, they chase the gang of red squirrels out of her beloved treetop home in the spring. Thank you, ee! Miss Suzy is teaching us to love squirrels, the sweet little grey ones, anyway. (Ours was red.) 

Someone will read the story to you on youtube.