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!)
Image from here.
Traditional Maxim: If March comes in like a lion, it'll go out like a lamb. If it comes in like a lamb, it'll go out like a lion.
Update: If March comes in like a lion, it'll suddenly turn into a lizard, then briefly into a Labrador retriever, then back again into a lizard before it goes back out again like a lion. If March comes in like a lamb, it'll be served with mint sauce.
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.)
This is the angel Luke made at school as a Christmas present for me.
And here is the battle scene he drew at home as a Christmas present for me. Both were wrapped up and tucked under the tree on Christmas morning. I particularly like the detail on the left -- the man who loses his glasses as he falls out of the sky and uh, smashes his head into the ground. Happy holidays everyone!
Vintage telephone ad from here.
Luke: Mommy, could you call [my friend] and ask her to come over and play?
Steph: Why don't you call her?
Luke: I'm too shy to speak to her father.
Steph: Well, you have to get over that. I used to be very shy, too, and my mother made all my telephone calls for me. Then, when I was teenager and went away to live by myself and go to university, I remember that I was afraid to call the hair salon to make an appointment to get my hair cut! That was dumb, wasn't it?
Luke: Yeah, you never should have lived alone.
Some months ago I did a little genealogical research and discovered that my children are descended from royalty. I wrote an article about it for the current issue of Brain, Child magazine:
Friedrich III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and his wife Eleanor of Portugal were, Ancestry.com told me, the thirteenth great grandfather and grandmother of my husband! There were even pictures of them—well, paintings. There was Great Great Grandpa Friedrich getting introduced to Great Great Grandma Eleanor by the pope, as painted by Pinturicchio. There was a portrait of Friedrich looking steely-eyed and a bit jowly, the way my husband sometimes looks while watching his favorite hockey team lose. And here was a portrait of Eleanor peering wistfully at a flower, something about her expression, the lines of her face, reminding me of my son’s when I told him enough with the video games.
Because excellent records are kept by royalty—in a sense their family history is everyone’s history—once you find a connection to a king, it is possible to go back for generations and generations. I surfed for hours, looking at photographs of a golden crown that had once rested on the head of the fifteenth great grandfather of my children. I started planning summer vacations to the palaces their ancestors had once lived in. I began researching language tuition in German and Spanish for the children, never mind the fact that their ancestors lived so long ago they would’ve spoken entirely different versions of those languages. Basically, I stopped just short of writing to request invitations to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding.
With their bloodlines becoming clearer, some of my children's quirks began to make sense. The way my six-year-old son still wanted me to dress him in the morning, as if I were his valet. My two-year-old daughter's insistence on wearing a pair of golden slippers at all times and her particularly erect posture and imperious manner. ("Play cars, Mama!" she commands with a little wave of her hand and a slight, dignified inclination of her head. "Sit here!" she orders, pointing to a particular spot on the floor, her stern expression demonstrating that she will not tolerate dissent. "Dis one, Mama!" she says, handing me her preference when I pick up the wrong one. And then, "Vivi's turn first!")
This intriguing discovery was, for lack of a better word, brief. You'll have to get your hands on a copy of the magazine to find out the rest.
I like to zone out and look at the mesmerizing images on Angela Walters's beautiful Mothers and Daughters pinterest board while my own little daughter tugs at my arm and begs me to play with her. (I usually snap out of it when she starts bellowing "HELLOOOO!? MOMMY!? Anybody HOME!?")
Image from here.
Luke: Mommy, do your eyes make everything look grey?
Steph [puzzled]: No... [suddenly concerned] Why?! Do yours?
Luke: No.
Steph: Well, why you'd ask?
Luke: I just thought that maybe when people got old, their eyes made everything look grey.
Today I go to the doctor to see if I have inherited rheumatoid arthritis from my mother, along with my sense of humour and my lovely fingernails. The trouble with being a hypochondriac is that there are so many possible diagnoses and so little time... before you drop dead from something you've only just begun to suspect you might have.
The one health problem I am quite sure I have is children.
I found the above cartoon on pinterest. Apparently it is from shoeboxblog.
