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!)

Luke Caught His First Fish!

Give a boy a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a boy to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Give your sister a fish and freak her out with the glare of its glassy dead eyes. Somebody better teach your mother how to prepare and cook a fish from scratch if you keep this up, kid. (I am quite impressed -- I do not think I have ever caught a fish.)

Sylvie and the iPhone

Over the weekend, Sylvie discovered the iPhone, which, up until now, has been monopolized by her brother (when it is not being used by yours truly). She particularly likes Animatch (currently her favourite), the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus, Old McDonald, and Draw and Tell from Duck, Duck Moose, Monkey Preschool Lunchbox, and the e-picture book The Monster at the End of this Book. (That book is over 30 years old and seems finally to have  found its true medium. Everyone in the family loves it.) Do you have any favourite iPhone apps for kids?

For some reason, every time she plays on the iPhone she has to wear her Anne of Green Gables hat. We are now calling it her iPhone hat.

One Day, My Child, You Will Be

A bishop, a boxer, a bullfighter. Eric Maloberti imagines what the future may hold for his three-month-old daughter June.

And of course, DON'T MISS Lotte Time Lapse: Birth to 12 years in 2 min 45, which makes me want to weep.

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.

Rite of Spring: Mayflowers

Nicholas Roerich, Kiss to the Earth.

On Sunday we went looking for mayflowers. They're called mayflowers but they come out in April here in Nova Scotia, at the tail end of winter. Their tiny pink and white blossoms, so delicate in comparison to the thick hairy brown stems and broad rusty leaves that protect them, smell heavenly -- sweet, wild and, beyond that, indescribable. Finding them -- and you can only find them in the wild  -- means that it is definitely spring.

Luke, unconvinced that mayflowering would be very exciting, brought his Lego Ninjago sword, which he used to fight off a number of invisible monster skeletons he happened upon. He also explained to me, as I peered into the underbrush looking in vain for tiny pink and white buds, that just the sight of his sword would be sure to terrify any bears we might stumble across, as surely at least a few of their ancestors must have been killed by swords. I nodded and kept looking for mayflowers, wondering how the bears might've communicated this ancestral fear of swords to their children. Sylvie, pushed along in her stroller by her father, bounced over tree roots and babbled about owls.

After some fruitless searching, we came out onto the hiking trail that has been made out of a defunct railway line. Luke and Vivi, who by now had tumbled out of her stroller, started to lag behind and to complain. Grampa's sharp eyes managed to discover three tiny unopened mayflower buds on the side of the trail. "Maybe it's still too early," I said and suggested that we make a quick detour to the nearby town graveyard, to see the children's grandmother's grave, before going on to the playground.

Luke's grandfather's name and birthdate are inscribed to the left of his grandmother's but of course, as Grampa is still with us, there is only a smooth empty space where the date of his death would go. "Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?" said Luke cheerfully, as  he pointed one by one at the blanks where the month, day, and year will be.

Vivi caught sight of a small gravestone carved in the shape of a teddy bear. She ran off toward it. I went after her, to make sure she didn't take any of the flowers away. It was the grave of an 8-month-old baby. "We love you, silly bird" was inscribed along the bottom. Sylvie giggled and stumbled away in her bumble bee boots. I followed her, looking down at my feet, my eyes suddenly filled with sunlight and tears. And there, in the dead brown grass all around the children's grandmother's grave, were dozens of mayflowers.

 

Thank you, Gramma Linda.

Retro First Moment

An iPhone photo of Luke, at his grandfather's house, reading the comics page for the first time. The comics page in an actual newspaper -- we don't subscribe to any physical papers anymore. I taught a lot of kids to read (or at least helped them learn) but  it is so much more amazing when your own child starts to do it, as exciting as when he said his first word or took his first step. It's as if he were the only child in the world clever enough to figure out how to do such a miraculous thing.