crooked house

How to Watch The Season Premiere of Downton Abbey In Real Time Today

The third season of Downton Abbey premieres in the UK today. If you are not fortunate enough to live there, there are a couple of blogs that are suggesting ways you can watch it in real time today or, failing that, tomorrow. Worth a try, don't you think? This blog suggests ways you can make it seem as if your computer is actually located in the UK, so you can watch the livestream from itv.com. And this one is going to provide links to other sites that are livestreaming and they are going to share the episode on Monday. (I just noticed the Dowager's new hat. Wow.)

Snow White and Apple

Snow White loves her apple. Via Breezes from Wonderland.

Lucy Worsley

My new obsesssion: Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, and BBC presenter of fascinating documentaries, including this one, which looks back at the historical development of four rooms in the modern home: the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the living room. Someone has made all the episodes available on youtube. She has also written a book called If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, which I have reserved at the library. Next up: Worsley's documentary called Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls. According to her blog, she is currently researching a series on the history of the murder mystery and its fascination for British society. (Big thanks to Sara O'Leary for suggesting Worsley's documentaries to me!)

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!)

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.

Walk Off the Earth: Someone That I Used to Know

Fun video, pretty song by a Burlington-based band that appears to perform mostly covers on youtube. It went viral last week.

Mrry Chrstms!

Bill Lobley and family's Chrstms crd.

Jim Gillian: The Internet is My Religion

This is an extremely moving speech.

My Article For Brain, Child Magazine: Who We Think We Are

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.